Doan Tana has a Secret
by SirMandokarla
Summary: Not every Grineer has a story. Most Grineer don't have secrets. But Doan does. She's smarter than the average Grineer, and her secret is quick, invisible, and has horns.
1. Secret

Doan Tana has a secret. That, in itself, makes her rather unusual. After all, Grineer aren't exactly known for their subtle and conniving ways. Doan Tana, however, is – oh, how to put it diplomatically? – a touch smarter than the average copy-of-a-copy soup-for-brains Grineer. Obviously, her intelligence is not, in itself, a secret. After all, if Tyl Regor could flaunt those tubemen of his, Doan Tana can figure out a better strategy than, "shoot there," once in a while without raising suspicion.

Where were we? Oh, right, the secret.

It all started on a day like any other. A squad of grineer had been assigned to clear one of their ships of Infested. Not a very fair fight, all told, since the ship had originally been populated by several hundred grineer, which most of them were pretty sure was more than a squad.

In ascending order of intelligence, the first few grineer were blissfully unaware of any problems, the larger second group was nervous ranging into terrified, and exactly two grineere were feeling knowledgeably confident. This was because one of those two had paid attention to the briefing (which consisted of a lengthy bout of mostly-articulate shouting), while the other had given said briefing. At least, we assume he was confident. Most people pay attention to their own briefings, even if they could handily switch the contents of their skull with the contents of their gun magazines and be none worse off.

\- Sir, if you would like a less biased accounting of events, perhaps you would prefer to scribe the history yourself. -

\- As I expected. -

For those paying attention, it is a safe guess that Doan Tana was the other of these two.

As a matter of fact, she was the tall grineer in white armour standing a little away from the rest of her dozen squadmates. It is important that there were a dozen and that she was standing alone, because she was the only own in the group willing to count that high without prompting, and her squad didn't much like that kind of curiosity. So she stood alone, and even her squad leader, who one would think might appreciate being listened to, ignored her.

Typical of grineer, not to properly appreciate those who should stand out among them rather than stand aside. Not that Doan struck much of an impressive figure. Whether she was uglier than others of her ilk is for others to judge, but she was a clone, and therefore of average height for her stock, approximately two and a third meters after her cybernetics, with long spindly limbs and a round head, all cooped up in that dreadfully tasteless armour they wear.

\- Yes, sir, less fashion commentary. But really, the grineer are so…-

\- Yes, yes. Do you want this story recorded or not? -

\- Thank you. -

Doan's defects – for those are always the most intriguing parts of a grineer – included a bad hip that made it difficult for her to sit properly, poor eyesight that seldom interfered with her role as a heavy machine gunner, and a host of other small issues which were handily dealt with by grineer engineering and therefore hardly worth mentioning. Of course, Doan Tana's intellect can hardly be considered a defect, though the queens surely would consider her curiosity to be one.

After all, it is difficult to discover anything worth keeping secret without a hint of curiosity.

I've digressed again, haven't I?

Let's see… ship, infested, Doan, ah, yes! The entrance! Very exciting, I'm sure.

You see, the squad of Grineer were all waiting. Better for them, since a squad of grineer on an infested ship has about the chances of the third brown Chesa kubrow in a litter. So, some grineer with both money and sense decided to call in a Tenno to help with the job.

Yes, a Tenno. Naturally, the commander was a bit nervous. After all, perhaps one in a hundred thousand grineer missions even asked for Tenno support. Far more likely for a grineer mission to come to a gruesome end by Tenno intervetion. At that point in history, only a few million grineer had been killed by Tenno, but some of the cleverer ones had started to notice the pattern.

Tenno were dangerous. It was all over the yelling channel.

Such was the reason Doan had such a good grip on her gorgon machine gun and her back to a wall. Better yet, there was nothing on the other side of the wall but space, so she was definitely facing the right way to see the Tenno as soon as it saw her. She felt that would help.

In Doan's defense, she'd never met a Tenno before.

After just long enough for most of the squad to get bored, the Tenno dropped out of thin air, in a locked room, in the middle of a grineer squad, on an infested ship.

A minor fuss was mad. Some yelling, a few gunshots, a lot more yelling, a nearly literal disarming that at least resulted in a very sore shoulder, and then what amounted to a conversation between the Tenno and the squad commander. Considering the Tenno didn't speak and the commander couldn't yell more than a few words without swearing, it cannot be said to be one of the diplomatic successes of the war. Nevertheless, the matter was cleared up in due course and the squad started to move out.

The first thing that happened was that the Tenno disappeared again, prompting some grumbling from the grineer that they'd been abandoned already.

Typical grineer mindset, that a Tenno would act as cowardly as they would.

Dear young Doan, however, had an inkling that the Tenno hadn't disappeared. In spite of her eyesight, she noticed that the first room her squad entered included more than a few infested that seemingly split in two of their own accord, neat as you please. Not normal behaviour for any living being, I assure you. Therefore, she concluded… what were her words? Not sightable? Un-seeable?

\- Invisible? Are you sure she knows a word like that? -

Invisible. Hm. Told you Doan was smart.

Clearing out the ship was a boring thing, because entire rooms seemed to be cleansed of infested before they arrived, and any time there were enough to make for a good fight, half of them seemed to fall in pieces before the grineer could shoot them. It led ot a bit of a frustrated mood for the grineer, who had been promised quite a lot of shooting this mission. Grineer were usually that way, looking for some way to relieve their perpetual crankiness.

Doan, however, was finding herself amused by the trick of guessing where the invisible Tenno was or where it was going to strike next. Sometimes she'd see a string of infested blood fly across the room, or even catch a half-imagined glint behind an ancient a second before it stopped getting any more ancient. Maybe she spotted a pair of footprints in the infested stuff on the floor or saw a door open when there was nothing there.

This turned out to be a very useful skill, because while a Tenno is a silent and deadly killer – sometimes – Grineer are rarely so. As a matter of fact, they are rather famous for their, "combat formation bravo," which amounts to precisely as complex a thought process as, "enemy, everyone shoot!" Not a healthy prospect for a Tenno standing in the way, I can assure you. Doan didn't really know this, but she didn't want to annoy her squad's new friend, so she found herself constantly pointing out enemies to shoot or knocking rifles and men aside so they wouldn't shoot him.

Like any reasonably intelligent grineer, Doan Tana didn't like her odds clearing out an infested ship with nothing but a few lancers, her heavy gun, and her commander.

All of this would have been fine. No reason for any secrets, really. Except that the Tenno must have noticed, because he returned the favour.

\- What do you mean, interesting? -

\- Oh, yes, much clearer. Thank you. -

-Yes, that was sarcasm! -

It was after the grineer and Tenno had killed their way across more than half the ship that things suddenly went very wrong. The Tenno was nowhere to be seen – yes, haha, very punny – and the infested were cleared out in the room the squad was in. Together, they formed up near the next door, listening to the sounds of infested on the other side with varying degrees of anticipation.

Doan Tana shouldered her way to the front and stepped through the door first. She had the most armour and was the biggest, but she didn't like being in front much. It meant other people were watching her. Today, though, she got to be the first to guess where the Tenno was, and that was the most fun she'd had in her life.

Suffice to say, grineer lifestyles are not riveting entertainment.

When the door opened, Doan did not see the Tenno, or any signs of it. What she did see was a room filled with what the layman might call WAY TOO MANY infested.

Doan, being a reasonable sort of individual, pulled the trigger on her gorgon rifle and yelled, "FIRE!"

In spite of her quick reaction and the surprising speed with which her squad responded, it was seconds before both lancers on either side of Doan were dead and replaced with infested chargers, while Doan herself was shin-deep in infested muck and reduced to using her rifle to batter away the nearest infested. Obviously, this had the unfortunate side effect of reducing her life expectancy considerably.

Then there was a flicker on the opposite side of the room, and everything shifted. Doan found herself standing behind the swarm of infested, watching her squad be torn apart alongside the Tenno, who seemed to be standing right where she'd been a moment before.

At this point, Doan Tana was very lucky to be Doan Tana, because somebody less intelligent might have taken longer to realize where she'd ended up, and somebody more intelligent might have wasted time wondering how she ended up there. As it happens, Doan Tana inhabits that special place on the smarts spectrum that lets her react promptly, if primitively, to unexpected situations without using up too much valuable brain power worrying how the situation arose. Therefore, Doan wasted no time doing as grineer do, albeit with characteristically greater grace and alacrity. She reloaded her rifle, pointed it at the enemy, and opened fire.

Really, Doan should have gotten a medal for her execution of combat formation bravo that day. Sadly, Grineer don't offer medals, so her commander ended up telling her something along the lines of, "good job, onto the next one, try not to die on this one, either," except with more growling and terrible enunciation, as one might expect of a man whose jaw formed into a shape somewhat resembling a squeezed sponge.

And Doan would have been happy with that. Well, not happy. Satisfied. Happiness wasn't really something Grineer were very good at. Cranky all the time, actually.

She would have been satisifed, if not for the body lying amid the pile of Infested grossness.

The Tenno hadn't been quite as lucky as she had.

The rest of her squad went on ahead, and Doan's commander tried to make her come with them, but she was a female and therefore tougher than him, so she stayed and he grumbled and walked away.

It turned out that it was a he, with horns on his head and dull grey armour-cloth covering most of its body. He just lay there, covered in gross infested goo and claw gouges.. There was nothing majestic about him now, just a sense that something amazing had been lost.

And it was Doan's fault.

The feeling that welled up in Doan's chest wasn't the secret she kept, because she didn't know what it was and therefore didn't really have a secret to tell. Whatever it was, it made her eyes itch. She could tell because they watered a lot. Itching wasn't an unusual thing, for a Grineer. Same for aches and pointy ouchies and other various crankiness-inducing things. This was different, though.

Doan pulled the Tenno from the muck and sat him against the wall. Then she went back and got his weapons. A little red sword – well, little for her – and a simple rifle. She stumbled across a bolto that was too colourful to be Grineer, so she brought that, too, and put the sword in one hand, the bolto in the other, and the rifle across his lap. Then she stood back and surveyed the room.

It was its own little garden of chaos. Not that Doan knew what a garden was, but if this narrative were limited to a grineer vocabulary, even Miss Tana's, we would quickly run out of ways to put the words together.

It was what she'd have liked. Back against a wall, weapon in hand, lots of gross dead things all around, because she'd killed them. Not face down in muck in the middle of a lot of other dead things. That was no good.

Then Doan moved up to one of the fleshy walls and leaned against it. She'd have sat, but one of her legs had a thing with its fleshy bits and it didn't bend very well. It hurt if she sat on it, too.

What happened next, that became her secret. She wouldn't tell anybody about it.

Doan's eyes weren't the best. Ask anybody and they'd say that a Heavy Gunner didn't need good eyes. Still, the flash of light was bright, bright like an explosion. Doan guessed it actually was an explosion, kind of. Except the thing in the middle was fine and everything else was broken and burned.

There was the Tenno, collecting its weapons. It straightened up and looked at Doan. Doan looked at it. At him. The way the Tenno stood, holding his weapons in his casually threatening way, made Doan think that she'd seen something she shouldn't have.

Rather than kill her on the spot, however – after all, that would have wasted the effort he'd put in earlier – the Tenno lifted one finger to his faceplate.

Doan copied the gesture, putting one finger to her lips in a shushing motion.

"Secret," she said.


	2. Boredom

Doan Tana was bored. Of course she was. Grineer aren't exactly ideal candidates for stimulating social interaction. Miss Tana herself being the exception that proves the rule. Whatever that means.

One would think she'd be a little more entertained on this occasion, however. There are, after all, a great many Grineer who are enthusiastic about Councilor Vay Hek's speeches.

"The relays are a blight on this system! HIVES of scum and TRAITORS! When our Fomorian arrives, THEIR HIVES WILL BURN!"

For whatever reason.

Doan was trying to find a comfortable way to stand. It was practically a pastime for her, since she couldn't very well turn to the lancer beside her and start up a conversation. He'd just grunt or yell at her, and that would be the end of that.

"BEHOLD! The Fomorian~ CORE!"

Doan was trying to see if there was an angle she could hold her foot at that would make the pinching in her hip stop, but she looked up for this.

The massive power generator trundled into the room on a track thicker than a bombard and probably twice as smart. It was Grineer tech, so it was grey-green, with orange lights and lots of piping. It turned the corner and swayed, ever so slowly, side to side as it entered the straightaway.

Doan smiled as she imagined the core zipping past like a racing kubrow. It was a good thing she was wearing her helmet, because Grineer tend to frown on smiling in general.

"With this, my mighty Fomorian will be complete, and we will END the TENNO MAGGOTS!"

The hundred Grineer lined up with Doan cheered, and Doan cheered with them, if a little less enthusiastically. Where others were chanting, "TENNO SCUM," and, "DESTROY THE TRAITORS," Doan preferred to just yell incoherently for a few seconds, then pretend for the next minute or two.

The last few months had been boring, too. Assigned to one mission after another, killing Corpus and Infested and a few traitors here and there. Always the same.

It wasn't that Doan wasn't good at her job. She was very good. After all, a clever Grineer tends to take people by surprise.

The problem was that there was nobody to take Doan by surprise. Other Grineer avoided her, Corpus ran away from her, Infested ran at her, it was all the same.

The Fomorian core trundled past, slow and loud, but not loud enough to drown out Vay Hek, to the surprise of nobody who's heard the dubious pleasure of hearing the Councilor speak.

Doan went back to fidgeting, even tapping on her thigh to see if she could knock something into place.

There was a clank, a thunk, an explosion, and screaming.

Doan Tana paused. Those first two sounds had been her armour. Those last two, though…

She looked up at where the core had just left the room.

There was another explosion, and yelling.

This was a foundry on Ceres, mind, and it wasn't as if the Grineer had many visitors, since they made terrible hosts. Most of them didn't even know what tea was!

-Still don't. Barbarians.-

-Yes, Miss Tana has come a long way. If only the same could be said of you.-

-I'm getting there! Stop interrupting.-

It didn't take Doan Tana much time to realize how few people could have arrived on Ceres, much less without the Grineer noticing, and coincidentally at the same time as they were transporting a Fomorian core.

Tenno.

Doan Tana ran in precisely the wrong direction, compared to any sensible person who's just realized Tenno are in the next room. Of course, there wasn't a single sensible person around, so they were all running in the same direction, anyway.

"TENNO!? TENNO! TENNO ARE HERE! THEY HAVE MY CORE! STOP THEM! STOP THEM AT ONCE!"

The Grineer hadn't even needed to be told once. That was just Vay Hek enjoying the sound of his own voice.

There was something calming about the clamour of armoured boots. It probably had something to do with the subconscious understanding that the most dangerous thing around - a veritable army of heavily armoured and angry soldiers - was accounted for. Or it could have something to do with utterly bizarre priorities in Grineer indoctrination.

Or maybe Doan was just weird. It wouldn't exactly surprise anyone.

In any case, by the time Doan Tana reached the doorway to the next room, she'd stopped fantasizing about sleek, lithe bodies with hard, firm synthetic muscles and lustrous metallic skin, moving with graceful, almost languid-

-What? Nothing. Where was I?-

Right. Doan Tana was ready to do her job, free of... distractions.

The Grineer roared into the room. Some just yelled. At least one squeaked. Grineer don't prioritize vocal cords when looking at things to patch up coming out of the tube. After all, if it can hold a gun and walk, it's a functional Grineer.

This makes it unsurprising that the first ten Grineer through the massive bunker doors diied screaming.

Doan decided to slow down a little, at least until she could figure out what was killing the rest of her platoon.

Tenno, obviously, but the specifics were important. Well, to Doan they were.

The screams weren't terribly helpful. They included such comments as, "Tenno scum," "oh, Queens, why," and, "bullets! My one weakness! How did they know?!"

After a few seconds of her comrades feeding themselves into the meat grinder, Doan decided the only way the only way to see everything would be to go and check personally, if carefully. She ran to the side of the doorway and peered around the corner to see three Tenno. Two of them stood beneath the core, ribbons of energy connecting them to it. The third stood high above, on the railing that carried the Fomorian core, and was probably shooting all the Grineer below, though Doan's eyesight wasn't good enough to be sure. She thought it might not be, because every time she heard the sound of a gunshot, it wasn't when the Tenno moved like its gun was kicking.

After a few shots, Doan noticed the sound always happened half a second after she thought the Tenno had fired.

It must be a very weird gun, she thought.

I take this moment to interject that Grineer educational standards can roughly be compared to their safety standards: anyone suggesting action on either front was usually "asked" to take a long trip out a small airlock.

The Tenno above moved, and suddenly Doan could feel the rifle pointed at her. Before she could move, though, the feeling was gone, then the sound of the gun firing reached her ears.

That Tenno had been about to shoot her, Doan was sure of it. But it hadn't. Why not?

It is a testament to her brilliance that Doan Tana survived the next moment. She-

-Well, I have to tell this part.-

-And it taught you a lesson, didn't it?0

-Alright, smart guy, tell me how I'm supposed to tell the story if I skip it. Go on, tell me how it would make sense.-

-That's what I thought.-

Doan Tana slammed her hand into the ground, sending out a shockwave powerful enough to knock down anyone around her, including invisible Tenno who liked sneaking up on people.

Now, it's important to note that, when Doan spun around to see her attacker, she saw nothing. Most invisibility isn't perfect, but Miss Tana's eyesight simply isn't good enough to see the shimmering of distorted light.

It was, however, good enough to see the thin trail of bodies that led straight to the spot she'd be if she were about to stab herself in the back.

Which is a sentence that makes sense, if you think about it.

She stepped forward and, right where she expected, her foot met the back of an invisible body. The body started to move, so Doan stomped hard. Then she pointed her Gorgon at the Tenno. Even Grineer engineering couldn't miss at that range.

Rather than shoot, Doan threw herself to the side. She stumbled her landing and tweaked her hip, but the bullet that would have hit her instead passed harmlessly through the prone Tenno and hit the metal flooring below.

As one might imagine, Doan's antics attracted little notice from the relatively few Grineer still running past at the three visible enemies and rapidly receding Fomorian core.

Doan scrambled back ot the fallen Tenno, grabbing for it. She missed her first grab because the Tenno was getting up, but her second grab caught the side of hi- its neck. Lifting the Tenno left-handed, she slammed it into the great metal doorframe and brought her Gorgon to bear, this time out of sight of the Tenno sniper.

She placed the Gorgon's barrel against her invisible enemy's side.

The Tenno's invisibility faded, revealing a lean body, grey and white with silver etchings. A Tenno with a horned head. A familiar-looking Tenno, though a bit more colourful than last time.

Doan blinked and leaned in closer, as if that would change what she was looking at.

"Secret," she said wonderingly.

"Tenno!"

"Tenno scum!"

That was when the other Grineer noticed.

Doan looked at the Grineer running towards the pair of them, then at the familiar Tenno with his shoulder against the wall.

Even if they killed him, he wouldn't die. She knew that. There would be a flash of light and he would be fine.

But that was a secret, and even if it wasn't, she didn't want to see him die again.

Metal scraped against metal as Doan dragged her captive along the wall, then threw him through the doorway.

-Of course you could have.-

-And, if you'd done that, Miss Tana wouldn't be around today.-

-Sh- shut up! How would you know? You're just a c- Ahem.-

The Tenno landed much better this time, even he could probably use a few more drops on the head.

-I am telling it from her point of view!-

-Fine.-

The Tenno landed much better this time, hitting the ground first with his hands, then rolling and springing to his feet.

There was a rallying cry of, "Tenno scum!" and every surrounding Grineer pointed their guns at the faded-coloured pon-… person.

The Tenno raised his hand.

He waved it.

The Grineer collectively pulled triggers and, just as collectively, let out noises of confusion and frustration when not a single bullet fired.

Doan Tanna, watching with her gun vaguely pointed in the right direction, would swear she could see the Tenno smiling if she squinted.

Then the Tenno disappeared. At the far end of the room, the other Tenno were opening the far door for the core to go through. The invisible Tenno would be going there, Doan decided.

Then Doan would just have to cut them of. To stop the core, obviously. That was her duty to the Queens. Even if the Queens weren't quite as impressive as the Tenno.

Doan rapped herself on the helmet for that thought, then turned towards a side door and ran. It was a small door, maybe a head taller than Doan and three times her shoulder width, so it was good for sneaking. This was good, because Doan was planning on doing that and, being Grineer, she needed all the help she could get.

Though, to her credit, even making the attempt was not something most Grineer were inclined towards.

I suppose it's very much along the same lines as keeping a secret, so it's not a surprising move on her part. Well, it was, but- sorry. Sidetracked.

In any case, Doan Tana snuck through the secret passage, past a few drudges hard at work, and soon came out in the next room. That is, the room into which the core would soon be coming, two rooms after the Tenno had commandeered it.

Oh, the details don't matter. The point is, the core was coming, and it was up to Doan to prepare to foil the Tenno's hijacking.

What did you expect? She was still a Grineer!

And, unlike the Grineer that were currently boosting Tenno kill counts in the other room, Doan Tana had a plan. Two plans, in fact. She was a very unusual Grineer.

Stories floated around Grineer bases, about the Queens, about famous Grineer, about the latest Rathuum match. The most popular stories, though, were about Grineer victories. Victories over the Corpus, or over the Infested, or, rarest but most popular, victories over the Tenno. Some of those stories were less glorious than others. For example, it was well-known that most hijackings by Tenno had one solution: scorched earth. Destroy the core.

The amount of bullets it would take to destroy a Fomorian core could just as effectively be used as a barricade to stop the thing coming through the door. There was, however, a method that had worked several times, and would give Doan the time to enact her second plan, even if the first one failed.

Doan looked at the control panel she'd been planning to use.

She stared at the buttons, then looked up at the transport rail overhead, then back at the buttons on the control panel.

Then she turned around, walked back into the tunnel, and grabbed the first drudge she saw.

"Wha-" The drudge, who we will call Bob for simplicity's sake,scraped along the floor with a nonplussed look, catching a metal heel on a rivet periodically before Doan pulled a little harder and dislodged him.

When they reached the control panel, Doan spun Bob around and plopped him in front of the panel. His spine compressed a little, and his head bobbed once.

Bob stared at the buttons, then looked up at Doan overhead, then back at the buttons on the control panel.

He raised his plasma torch.

Doan smacked it out of his hand and pointed up at the railing. "Electricity," she said. "Lots, on the railing."

Here we see the usefulness of the unquestioning obedience most Grineer display, as Bob immediately set to work overloading the rail's power lines and, at Doan's continued urging, overrode the overrides. Soon, the rail was sparking with visible electricity.

The next part of the plan involved things that were way more impressive than sparks.

To stop the core, Doan only needed to break the railing. That would need an explosion. If she wanted to, Doan could run and find the nearest Bombard, but if she did that, she might not see the Tenno again. That would be… bad wasn't the right word, but something like having that twinge in her hip, except in her head.

Sad was the word she was looking for, if you were wondering.

Whatever the case, Doan was determined to get another look at the Tenno before foiling their mission, which meant finding something in the room to do the job.

If there is one nice thing that can be said about Grineer engineering, it is that one never lacks for pipes waiting to explode.

Which counts as a nice thing if one likes explosions.

Doan didn't need Bob for this part. She snatched his plasma torch from where it had fallen to the ground, dropped the Gorgon she'd only been holding out of habit, and started climbing the closest wall.

It wasn't a graceful thing. The first handhold Doan put her hand on was a pitted, decrepit thing that left rust stains on her hand. The next one came off in her hand and sprayed her helmet with coolant fluid. The plasma torch made gripping with her right hand awkward, and she ended up switching hands so she could make up for her right leg not being able to lift very high. Eventually, though, she made it as high as she needed.

Doan leaned back and tried to turn. When the pipes she was holding started wobbling, she switched her grip to hugging one of the larger pipes, then turned as much as she could to get a good view of the railing.

And the door.

It was opening. The core was coming through.

The Tenno had arrived. Over the sound of hissing steam and creaking metal, Doan could hear Grineer yelling and gunfire.

Not enough gunfire. Whatever distraction the other Grineer were providing, it wouldn't last long. In fact, the amount of yelling dropped noticeably while Doan was considering this fact, though only after peaking momentarily.

Doan Tana turned back, got a firm grip on a relatively intact pipe, then jammed the plasma torch into a between three pipes. With another piece of spare piping, she forced the device on, pointed directly at one of the largest pipes in the room. Then she started down as quickly as possible.

Either too quickly or not quickly enough, depending on one's opinion. Doan hadn't made it two meters before a line of holes were punched into the pipes around her. She lost her grip, scrabbled for another pipe, missed, and fell. Rather than fall the next five meters to the ground, though, her legs caught between a pipe and the wall. Unfortunately, the rest of her body didn't take the cue to stop.

This is how Doan Tana found herself upside down, trapped, staring at the horned Tenno landing on the platform below her. In fairness, it might have been funny if it hadn't been both terrifying and excruciating. There was one Tenno that was a few steps away from taking her head off, with the others scrambling around the room in an attempt to redirect the power on the rail before the core overloaded. As for the excruciating aspect, well, unbeknownst to the young Grineer, her hips had just been forced into a proper alignment for the first time in her life. Considering they hadn't actually grown in such a way that was normally possible, she was in quite a bit of pain.

As a matter of fact, she was having trouble appreciating the grace with which he drew his sword, and couldn't tell what colour it was through the black spots forming in her vision.

The Tenno pointed his sword, took a step forward… then hesitated. He looked right at Doan's eyes for just a second. A long second. Then his sword came up-

The pipes above exploded. I'm told it was grand. Blew a hole in the wall, snapped the rail in half, shattered a dozen pipes on either side of the wall that caused more minor reactions and resulted in at least seventeen different pigments and hues drifting through the air in the aftermath.

Of course, nobody ever takes me along on missions, so I don't get to see that kind of thing.

One of the other results of the explosion was that the pipe holding Doan captive shattered, releasing her legs and dropping her unceremoniously to the ground.

In most cases, a Grineer landing on her head is, at worst, amusing and, at best, a chance for percussive engineering to do what genetic engineering has failed at. In Doan's case, one can only hope that nothing was knocked loose in the landing.

Obviously, the hole in the wall was on fire, the Tenno were running around in a panic, Bob was very dead, and our most important Tenno was standing over Doan's crumpled form. Being as tall as she was, there was rather a lot of form, and it took her a few seconds to uncrumple and get a proper look at the Tenno who's plan she'd just foiled.

Or, rather, a proper look at his sword.

-You know, you really made the whole "getting to know you" phase rather difficult, wouldn't you say?-

-Well, only if you consider explosions unfriendly.-

-No, no thank you. Maybe later? And outside the Orbiter, if possible?-

Doan, who was mostly untangled but whose hip was killing her almost as much as the Tenno was clearly about to, stared at the sword point, a little cross-eyed.

She was unarmed, alone, on her back in front of one Tenno who had his cell nearby in the same room.

"Hello," said Doan Tana.

The Tenno's sword sagged, and he shook his head in disbelief.

Another Tenno landed beside him, this one female, blue with hints of gold and white, and with a funny-looking shoulder-plate on her left arm and helmet that swept back like a fan.

The new Tenno raised her pistol, but the first stopped her. After barely a gesture or two, the female Tenno shrugged and left, leaping towards the Fomorian core.

When Doan was finished craning her neck to watch the female Tenno leave, she saw the male Tenno still standing there, but now he had one hand up in a familiar gesture.

Doan copied it, lifting one hand and putting a single finger in front of her mouth.

The Tenno shook his head again, then reached down and took Doan's hand. He pulled her up like she weighed as little as a rifle. It actually hurt quite a bit. Not because he was rough, but because the weight on her hips was harsh after her ordeal with the pipes.

Doan cried out and nearly collapsed again, but the Tenno reached out a hand and grabbed her shoulder, taking most of her weight in his grip. With the support, she tried to move her leg in a way that would feel better, but nothing seemed to work.

After a few seconds of pain that weren't quite agony, the Tenno reached out his other hand and held it over Doan's hip.

Then there was a rumbling behind him, and Doan watched as something bizarre happened. The female Tenno - she was pretty sure it was the same one, even at this distance - had her hands on the Fomorian core. The core was shaking so badly that the ground around it seemed to quake. Yet, even with the great shaking, there was no sound. The core seemed to slowly tear itself apart, and even as the pieces fell and crashed into the metal floor, no sound reached Doan's ears.

It was so distracting that Doan almost didn't notice the other unusual thing happening: the pain in her hip was fading. At the last moment, she looked down and saw a green smoke splashing off and seeping into her armour. It didn't even occur to her to be worried before the smoke stopped and the Tenno withdrew his hand from her hip.

Doan dropped her foot to the ground, then slowly put weight on it. She took a step in place with one foot, then the other. It was awkward; her legs didn't seem to be lined up the way the normally would be. Still, it felt right. It didn't hurt at all.

The Tenno let go of her shoulder and brought his hand once more to his faceplate.

One finger where his mouth would be.

Doan looked from his finger to her hip, then tested it one more time and looked back at him. She nodded.

"Secret," she said.

The Tenno nodded.

"Hello," she said.

He tilted his head, then nodded. Then he turned and leapt from the platform, following the other Tenno past the wreckage of the Fomorian core.

In moments, they were gone, leaving Doan still testing her legs in fascinated silence. When she'd finally come to the conclusion that her hip wouldn't suddenly give out on her and the ever-present ache wasn't coming back, she looked up again.

The wall was on fire. The Fomorian core littered the ground. The door to the exit had been jammed open. There were Grineer bodies absolutely everywhere. Off in the distance, there was a sparkle in the night sky. Maybe lightning, maybe one of those Tenno ships.

"Goodbye, Secret," whispered Doan Tana.


	3. Oops

-That one was your fault.-

-Yes, it was.-

-Yes. It was. Here, I'll prove it to you.-

Doan Tana sat patiently in the shuttle, watching her newest squad file in.

-Stop interrupting!-

-Yes, it's from her point of view.-

-I can tell it just as well this way. Do you want to tell it? I'm sure that'd be fascinating. Can you even spell "narrative"?-

-Oh, will you? I dare you.-

-Yeah. Because you can't even make this heap fly without me. Now sit down and listen while I prove you wrong.-

-You know what I mean.-

Doan Tana sat patiently in the shuttle, watching her newest squad file in. She kept getting new ones. Or, rather, her old ones kept dying. It was getting to the point where she'd requisitioned this batch the moment her last commander said, "for the glory of the Queens!"

She'd only been without a squad for a day and a half this time. Pre-emptive replacements were very efficient.

It ended up being a calm shuttle ride. Doan had long since given up introducing herself to new squad members, and Grineer weren't much prone to niceties, so she spent the time tapping out a rhythm with her feet. It was something she'd started doing after her hip was fixed, and since then it had sort of become a habit and a challenge. Every one of her armour plates would make a different sound when it was knocked. She found that she could make a pattern by tapping her feet or hitting her shins or thighs with either knuckles or arm plates. Start with one, then two, then three, repeating and adding one each time she repeated. Other Grineer would just assume she liked the noise and yell along or ignore it.

Her patterns did falter, however, when she started thinking about the mission ahead. It was a cleanup type, with the whole squad expected to go in and investigate a newly-emptied site in preparation for a new complement of Grineer marines. It was either boring work or leading lambs to the slaughter, depending on what had killed the previous batch and whether it had hung around.

Doan had a handy shorthand for how to deal with the various enemies that she might meet: if infested, make sure my legs are rested. If Corpus, call reinforcements for us. If Tenno, NO.

It had worked so far.

After all, they seemed like instructions the other Grineer could understand. By Doan's estimation, the advice had saved a full squad and three individual Grineer in the past months.

The ship clanked and shuddered once as it docked with the galleon they'd come to reinforce. The commander roared, and the Grineer piled out.

There was that peculiar feeling of wanting to cover her face. If there was something dangerous out there, a scout would have told them, and they hadn't heard anything from this ship in hours, which was why they'd come in the first place.

But, no, why would there be anything dangerous here?

-Yes, well, she could do with some health sarcasm. You expect me to be perfectly impartial?-

Doan followed quickly - and found out there wasn't much air in the other ship. Grineer were yelling and jostling to back up, but the sound wasn't carrying. The commander's voice, light and faint, called back, "life support! Activate the life support!"

The system he was talking about wasn't exactly life support so much as it was the life support support. Doan ducked back to activate it, charging through the transport and knocking a few males aside as she went. When she got to the front, she grabbed a dial and spun it all the way.

Air flooded through the transport and into the Galleon, and suddenly all the yelling was deafening.

Doan was of the opinion that it was probably worth being able to breath properly.

It was Grineer chatter, so I beg to differ, but then I also don't need to breath.

"A trap!"

"Find the scum who did this!"

"What's going on?"

"QUIET!"

The commander clubbed a few Grineer with his rifle and, once things had quieted down, divided the troops into scouting parties. It went surprisingly quickly. Grineer are not especially well-trained, but they have a unique blend of obedience and aggression that… well, it didn't work out so well for the Orokin, but it makes organizing Grineer so they can go fight a relatively agreeable process, as interactions with Grineer go.

Doan was grouped with the Commander and fourteen other soldiers, mostly lancers, but with two scorches and three troopers.

A flamethrower would be useful, especially against Infested. Maybe it was time to put in a requisition for one? Not today, obviously. There weren't any spores in the air or guck on the ground, so Infested wouldn't be a problem. Even the Commander knew that.

There weren't laser scorch marks, either, though there were a few burns from flamethrowers. No bodies, of course. Not with the self-destruct equipment everybody had - even the Tenno, according to rumours.

Doan knew the rumours were wrong there, but that wasn't important.

Where were all the bullet holes, though? Any decent fight would have had enough dakka to put holes in all the walls.

Doan had a bad feeling about this.

There were two quiet clacks of somebody tapping on her shoulder and she turned around to look. She was at the back of the squad. There shouldn't be anybody there.

Worse, there wasn't anybody there.

Next, she heard a metallic snik, a strangled, "hrk", and the muffled clatter of an armoured body hitting the floor.

Doan spun to see a scorch's body settle to the ground, then disintegrate as his armour's self-destruct activated.

The few other Grineer who noticed raised their guns and started looking around, like they'd find the culprit around the next corner.

They wouldn't. Even as the Commander turned to see what his troops were making such a fuss about, Doan backed up towards a corner and started scanning the room.

Another tap on her shoulder, and she would have turned her head to look if her armour let her, but instead she was forced to step to the side and turn.

Still, there was nothing there.

Nothing she could see.

There was another snik - another two - and Doan turned to see two lancers hit the ground.

The whole squad was in an uproar. Three of them down and not a single one of them with enough brain cells to rub together to spark on the idea of what was causing it.

So Doan did the job.

"Tenno," she yelled. She ran to the Commander and nearly bowled him over. "Call for backup!"

"Backup," the Commander growled. "You're sure it's Tenno?"

Doan nodded.

The Commander nodded back and said, "I know who to call." He activated his communications link that went all the way up to the Grineer leaders - not the Queens, obviously, the ones who actually work - and said, "we have Tenno confirmed. Call in the Grustrag Three."

Doan almost asked to borrow the man's comm link on the spot, just to call command and ask for a new squad. The Grustrag Three!? As if the Tenno weren't bad enough!

A helmeted Grineer head, sans the more necessary bits of Grineer, sailed between her and the Commander and cut off her protests.

The Commander turned to the group and yelled, "attack!"

There it was again, that violent need to cover her face so that she didn't have to look at what was going on. Not the bodies. A moment after he yelled this, the Commander split in two as neatly as chopped wood, and Doan did little more than snatch his comm device.

-What do you mean, you don't know what chopped wood looks like? You go to Earth all the time!-

-Well, no, she wouldn't know, either, but it's still a good analogy.-

-Fine! He split in two like a person chopped in half, vertically, really hard, by a blade that isn't very slim… It's not even a simile.-

-Because of course. It's just telling stories to children, I swear.-

For reasons that may be apparent to the astute reader/listener, Doan needed only one more death to figure out where the attacks were coming from, and so she raised her gun and fired.

The trick, after pulling the trigger on the Gorgon, was to keep the bullets from hitting other Grineer or the wall. If they just seemed to stop in mid-air, that was about right. The Gorgon being designed to fill the air with as many bullets as the Grineer … "engineer"... could cram into a gun, this is a surprisingly good method for finding invisible Tenno.

No Grineer, however, is actually prepared peer past muzzle flash and panicking Grineer to follow an invisible Tenno as it dashes and darts across a room for the exit. Therefore it can't be said to be Doan's fault when her target left the room, only mildly scathed.

The commlink-

No. First, deal with all the Grineer.

"QUIET!"

The others stopped their yelling and running around while Doan tried not to rub her throat. How did Commanders manage to yell all the time?

She pointed at the door. "Tenno is gone. The doors are closed. We stay here, shoot when door opens."

Two lancers pointed their guns at the door and Doan had to yell, "only when the door opens!"

There were two doors to the room, so she split the ten surviving Grineer between them and set herself up in the center of the room. Then she started explaining. Slowly.

"Commander called for backup. Backup is coming. Big backup is coming. They will kill Tenno."

That they might also kill all the Grineer, she didn't say. Grineer morale wasn't something she had a firm grasp on, but, "we're all going to die no matter what happens," didn't sound like a good thing to tell them.

All that finally organized, she called the other squads.

"Squads B to E, report in."

Silence.

"Squads B to E, report."

Not even static. Like they were in the last room in the system. There was nothing but silence out there.

Silence. Like that day with the Fomorian core.

Doan looked at all her survivors, wondering if she should tell them what else she'd figured out. What if they all turned to shoot at one door, and the other Tenno came in the other door?

Something else occurred to Doan, then.

Why wasn't she dead?

The one who tapped her on the shoulder, it was the Tenno, obviously. That meant it had been behind her twice.

She should be as dead as the Commander.

Over the next few minutes, she pondered that, sent messages out on the radio to tell others their position and that it was fortified, and then called command to find out how long reinforcements were going to take.

Fifteen minutes. That was so fast, but such a long time when fighting Tenno.

Once during that time, a door opened and was summarily filled with gunfire. No Grineer died. Whatever had been out there had decided on easier pickings.

No other Grineer arrived, even though Doan repeated their coordinates every two minutes.

Then came the moment when the radio squawked and a voice said, "Commander Nares, give us the location of the Tenno."

"This is… Gunner Tana. Tenno are missing. Our location is deck C, room 15-3."

"Roger that. Prepare for entry."

Entry… Entry!

"Everybody down!"

Grineer hit the floor without question, and it saved lives, because the next second, a boarding capsule punched through the wall, splitting metal into twisted cords and spraying sparks from electricity and grinding metal on metal.

The Tenno would have heard that. There was no way they couldn't.

Then the capsule opened, and three Grineer as tall as Doan and as wide as bombards stepped out.

Leekter, who'd killed seventy-three Grineer marines with his bare hand and now had a manticore hammer in his hands.

Shik Tal. It was said he'd discovered everything that could blow up on a Grineer Galleon the hard way, and the only reason he was alive was a three-meter-tall slab of metal he carried with him, stolen from the wreckage of one of his "experiments". They'd given him a handheld rocket launcher.

Vem Tabook. The leader. The one who'd started the massacre of Grustr-

Vem turned his shotgun towards a group of lancers and fired, laughing. "Wwworthless little… rats!" Doan didn't even have time to react.

The shotgun pellets hit the lancers and fell pathetically to the ground, fizzling slightly. When Vem saw that his targets were still alive, he swore and stomped his feet, raging at Dr. Tengus and trying to punch the nearest Grineer. His punch barely landed hard enough to rock the trooper back on his heels.

"C-command," Doan said into her radio, watching the monster rage. "One of the Grustrag Three has just attacked us, but… it didn't do anything."

"That would be the Grustrag Bolt," the voice on the other end said. "It limits effectiveness against Grineer. Just make sure they use one of the spares on the Tenno, we want them alive."

Which was, of course, a brilliant plan with no possible complications or details that could go wrong.

Grineer.

"Yes, sir," Doan said, nodding eagerly. Then she called out to the Three, "we have to capture a Tenno!"

"We don'tt take orders fffrom you, rat," Vem wheezed.

Doan stomped up to him. They were the same height, even if Vem was about five times as wide. Just to show how much she could get away with, she hit him across the helmet with the side of her rifle. When he tried to hit her back, she barely rocked backwards, and the whole squad laughed, except for the Grustrag Three.

"You do if you want to serve the Queens," she said, shoving him. "Now give me one of your bolts." She turned back to the squad and yelled, "we have a Tenno to capture!"

The squad roared its approval like they hadn't lost a quarter of their members without even seeing the Tenno that attacked them. At least Doan had the excuse of knowing the G3's reputation.

When the squad headed out, G3 at the front, they didn't have to go far. Nor was it all that subtle when they found the Tenno.

Silence hit the squad all at once.

Now, for those who haven't experienced it, true silence is a thing of nightmares. Organics, especially, don't have much experience with the concept, what with all the constant sloshing and squishing and thudding of various bits and bobs. Even the average Cephalon has some degree of dependence on hearing and little desire to test what complete soundlessness feels like.

For Doan, everything disappeared at clacking of booted feet, the hum of the ship's electronics, the soft whistle of her breathing, even the sound of her heart beating.

It wasn't something she was prepared for, and like the others, she let out a cry of alarm that nobody heard, not even herself, and reached up in an instinctive attempt to check her ears.

Even the brush of her hands on her helmet, she didn't hear, and she wasn't even sure she'd touched her helmet until she pushed her head sideways a little. The feeling on her fingers hadn't been enough to convince her mind that her hands had done what she'd asked.

Then she felt a pressure on her left shoulder, twice.

She span right, fist-first.

Her fist connected with something she couldn't see, then that thing hit the wall hard enough to leave a dent, and Doan could guess where it landed.

The rest of the squad was fighting the other one, the one they could see. If it caught them while this one was in the middle of them, they would all die.

The Grustrag Three would deserve it, but Doan had better things to do.

She leapt on the spot the Tenno had fallen, but she wasn't prepared for how strong it was. It lifted her up and tensed to throw her.

All this, without making a sound. It was starting to hurt Doan's head.

Still, she knew where the Tenno's hand was. She knew where its wrist was.

She dropped her gun, grabbed the Tenno's invisible wrist, and latched it on. There was a sort of motion that Doan was sure should have made a clicking sound as the device realigned, then a bolt shot out of it and through an invisible wrist.

The arms holding her up crumpled and she slammed down on top of a Tenno body.

Doan scrambled to her feet and stomped on the Tenno twice, but tried to keep her Gorgon pointed at the other Tenno.

It was losing, badly. A few Grineer were on the ground, injured but not dead, and the Grustrag Three had the thing penned in.

The other Tenno, the invisible one, appeared.

Doan should have known.

Secret. The silver lines along his limbs flickered in the light of the gunfire, the rest of his dull grey body was fine, except for the ghastly green bolt through his wrist.

In incredible slamming sound made Doan turn back to see the Grustrag Three on their backs in front of the other Tenno. That one, the silent one, it was blues, all blues, all light enough to fade into grey, but with a life to them that would never be seen on a Grineer or Corpus ship. Her left shoulder had some sort of armoured formation that matched her helmet, which opened up like a fan and swept back.

And she was aiming a gun right at Doan.

Doan picked up Secret and held him in front of herself. He was small, but he sufficed, even if he struggled. The other Tenno didn't shoot.

It was almost petty, the way she stabbed Leekter in the leg, then turned and ran.

That was… easy. Not that there was any time to think on it before Vem Tabook turned, saw Secret, and yelled, "thatt Tenno is oours!"

Doan handed Secret off to two of her lancers, who grabbed him by the arms and held him still. Standing between the G3 and her Tenno, she radioed… whoever was on the other end of the line and said, "Tenno captured. Where should we bring it?"

"You actually caught- I mean, well done. The Grustrag Three will take it from here. Return to your assigned duties."

Take Secret away from her? Secret, in the hands of the G3? They didn't deserve to be near him. He didn't deserve to be subjected to them!

"No. I'm going with h- it."

"You will follow orders, Gunner."

"The Tenno is my capture. The Grustrag Three did nothing but distract the other one."

"You fought t- Y- Alright. Gunner Tana, was it? You will accompany the Grustrag Three to our holding facility."

Doan Tana grinned and nearly cheered. This was perfect! Secret was hers!

Or, to put it another way, Doan Tana had a Secret.

-You just don't think it's funny because you got caught.-


	4. Ind and?

**Author's Note:**

 **This is a bit unusual. This particular story, I plan on updating once every two months. This month is a special case, mostly because I ended on a sort of cliffhanger last month. I say sort of because of the narration style. Hard to ratchet up tension when the narrator breaks off to chat with the main character(s) once in a while.**

 **For the few who've actually enjoyed this, I'm soon going to start something new. Each update of this story is planned to fit into one of the video game updates. For example, this chapter would be Update 13. Not for any particular reason, just because it seems like a good idea. The issue is that some updates have quite a few options, and I know which ones I liked, but not which ones are popular with the fans. So, anybody who likes, please tell me which events you think need some attention.**

 **Last thing: anyone with tips on writing, please, feel free to leave a critique. I see fanfiction as writing with training wheels, and I'm hoping to learn a lot before I get deep into another fic I'm working on.**

* * *

It was not perfect, Doan thought as she helped throw Secret into his cell. It was bad, as bad as that time she'd thought Secret was dead, before she knew his name.

The Tenno didn't look as Queenly as he used to. Parts of his armour were scorched black and, now that he was back in his cell, slightly dirty. They'd clean him the next time they brought him out, but he still looked sad, there in his cell.

Actually, he looked angry, like he might attack if it weren't for the barrer sliding closed between them, even with the bolt through his wrist.

Through the clear yellow door - transparent sepia, for those with class - Secret turned deliberately away from his captors and sat down on the metal floor. There wasn't anything else in the room; the leaders worried Secret might use anything else to go on a killing spree.

Smart, especially for Grineer. I once saw a Tenno commit an assassination with a paper airplane.

-What do you mean, what's a paper airplane?-

-Orokin preserve me, you're serious. Very well. A paper airplane is an atmosphere-bound gliding device built of a sheet of processed arboreal matter.-

-I am not making it up! Look, I've updated your alerts, you can- oh, end recording.

* * *

Where were we? Secret was locked up, Doan Tana was feeling guilty, no apparent resources for an escape. Secret had been locked up for a week now, and people wouldn't stop talking to Doan about it. One person, in particular.

"Tenno scum," Ind Cusd said cheerfully. "Locked up good. Doan did good… Want to eat?"

Ind, as one might have guessed, was not smarter than the average copy-of-a-copy, soup-for-brains Grineer. She'd latched on to Doan like a parasite after Secret's capture and Doan was kind enough to indulge her. The only mercy was how aptly the adage, "only wise men worry," applied to Ind. On the other hand, this also meant she had no idea how annoying her constant chattering was.

So. Annoying. Doan must just be very good at hiding her irritation.

By the time they reached the mess hall, Ind had exhausted her three-sentence depth of knowledge on several subjects and had moved on to things she somehow knew even less about.

"Space big. Windows small," Ind said sadly. Then she brightened. "Space pretty."

Doan nodded magnanimously and scooped some Grineer slop onto her tray, then scooped more onto Ind's.

"Doan, thanks"

Doan led them to a bench and an empty table, a luxury in a Grineer facility. Most often, Grineer ate from capsule tubes on ships without tables anywhere except bunk areas. Doan was having trouble focusing on the novelty, though. She pulled off her faceplate and slowly started to eat.

"Doan quiet. Sad?"

The brighter gunner looked up to see Ind had slowed down her eating. Not stopped, obviously - she liked food too much for that - but she was scooping slop into her mouth rather than shoveling it.

And the dunce had stumbled upon something.

"Yes," Doan said, even though she wasn't sure what she was sad about.

Ind… hold on, let me check my notes… This can't be… one moment.

I'm going to need to have a talk with Doan about exaggerating.

Ind stopped eating, this says, and she inched a bit closer to Doan and waited.

Doan sat there, face bare and a tray in her lap, as her friend watched her intently and other Grineer walked by or sat and yelled amongst themselves. The image kept coming into her mind, of the Tenno staring through a cell portal, shoulders set and hands ready to draw weapons that weren't there.

"The Tenno is sad," said the gunner.

"Yes," Ind bubbled. "Tenno sad, grineer happy." Then she paused. "Tenno sad, grineer happy… Doan sad?"

The simpleton had no idea how perfectly she had encapsulated the problem. Doan Tana reached out and put a hand on Ind's leg with a soft clank. If Doan was feeling whatever she was feeling about the Tenno and not about the Grineer, what did that make her? Why did she care so much? Why did she care at all? Because it was Secret? Did that matter? Yes, it did… but why? Secret was like all the other Tenno - he would kill the Queens if given the chance.

The thought sent a flash of rage through Doan, but it faded quickly and left her feeling more confused than before. Secret and the other Tenno had killed hundreds of Grineer, and that was only the ones Doan had been around for. It was just that those Grineer didn't matter.

Even if they did, with the scorch marks and how tired Secret always looked, Doan could only imagine what Dr. Tengus was doing to him.

Slowly, Doan started eating again. Ind kept watching for a few bites, then returned to her food with her usual gusto, keeping up a constant chatter all the while.

At least Grineer decor meant that it was hard to tell where she spilled her food.

The next-

-Will you stop throwing that thing around? I'm trying to concentrate.-

-Put it away before I fly us into Jupiter.-

So, skipping over a day of Doan wandering past Secret's cell and brooding, with her pet following cheerfully behind-

-I said stop throwing it!-

-Fine, not pet. Minion.-

-That's my sensor! That's my sensor! Ow, ow- yes, I can hurt! What do you mean, dramatic? Look, just- fine, fine! Friend. Doan's friend, Ind.-

Doan and her friend, Ind, helped bring Secret out of his cell the next day. Doan always did, and Secret always struggled, twisting and squirming and finding new ways to break free even with the strength limiter of the Grustrag Bolt. At least, he did that when they took him from his cell. On the way, back, he never seemed to have the energy.

Secret twisted, ducked, and seemed to slip from Doan's grasp like water. In the time it took to blink, he'd swung around Ind's body, kicked and launched himself from her back, and made it into the next room.

Ind stumbled, off balance from having two-hundred-fifty kilograms of metal use her as a jungle gym, and cried, "oh, bad!" She spun around to look for Secret, like he'd be standing right behind her.

Doan, however, ran to the panic button on the wall and activated the lockdown. Doors slammed closed all across the facility and alarms blared loud overhead. Calmly, she activated her radio, contacted the security center, and said, "deactivate all terminals in sector Te-3, just outside the doctor's lab. Now."

Luckily, this had happened several times before, and the security center knew what to do. In moments, the terminals were locked down just as the doors were, and Secret had nowhere to go.

For those wondering why Doan Tana was entrusted with escorting Secret in spite of frequently losing him within the facility, the answer should be obvious: they tried to replace her with Grineer.

The first replacement ran after him, screaming, until somebody thought to hit the alarms, then somebody else had to figure out it was time for a lockdown. Obviously, Secret deactivated the lockdown five seconds later.

You can imagine how long that went on for.

After Doan - and, surprisingly, Ind - helped recapture Secret, they were assigned to escort him on a more permanent basis.

This time, it took less than five minutes to recapture Secret, with Doan calling for unlocked terminals as she moved, then locking them behind her. When they caught up to him, he didn't even try to get past them. Instead, he just stared through the observation window opposite, the one that showed Dr. Tengus' lab.

The lab was brightly lit and full of metal, with a table covered in binds strong enough to hold-

-Secret? Are you alright?-

-No. No, you're not. Hold up your hand. It's shaking.-

-We're taking a break, and you should call a friend over. Belyri's operator, maybe? She's… tolerable, and she's in this story.-

-No, it's not that. I'm just tired of storytelling for now. Besides, we have enough material for plenty more airplanes. You should show them to her.-

-Good. I'll be busy for a few minutes, but say something if you need attention, alright, brat?-

-Heh.-

We're not actually taking a break. I think, however, I'll record the next part in silent mode.

Tengus was in the lab, with his chest armour life support system and oversized phallic helmet, all in black and beige with an honest-to-Orokin monocle on his left eye. Secret and he stood there, staring at each other through the transparent panel. The items - the torture implements - Tengus had planned for that day's session were laid on worktables surrounding the center of the room. Along the walls were cache cabinets, electronic readouts, and security turrets numerous enough to put down even a Rhino before it crossed the room.

Obviously, they couldn't take the Tenno apart. No Grineer knew how to do that without triggering self-destruct failsafes. Nobody wanted that, a fact that Doan used to console herself when she left Secret to the cruel scientist.

Today, Secret didn't struggle as they grabbed him again. He just walked with them as Doan called off the lockdown.

"Hr hr hr," chuckled the voice on the other side of the radio. "How far did it get this time?"

Doan Tana looked up at the door access panel they were passing, did some quick math, and - yes, math. Some Grineer can do that - and said, "room Te-3-81."

There was a moment of silence, then, "Queens save us. That's right outside the security center."

It was, Doan realized, but that couldn't be intentional. With the bolt, Secret wouldn't be able to overpower the males within. There was no point heading to the security center, because there was nothing he could do there.

"Fun to find stuff," Ind said cheerfully.

Doan nodded, not paying much attention as the door to Tengus' lab opened.

The doctor strode up to them. His smile was wide enough to split his face and he leered at Secret like a particularly shiny gun.

"Gunner Tanna," he said, gesturing to his table. "Welcome."

Doan smiled back and dragged Secret to the table. He struggled, even tried to get out the same way he'd done before, but the gunner was learning fast and managed to slam Secret into the table. Ind recovered from being knocked away and dove forward to close the bonds on Secret, with Doan holding down each limb long enough for Ind to do the job. Without any way to escape besides direct force, the Tenno was overpowered and bound in seconds.

It wasn't the part Doan liked, but she couldn't quite take her eyes off Secret as she turned to face Dr. Tengus. Ind started walking out. Doan stayed, though.

"Tana," the so-called man said, picking up one of his instruments, "I don't have time for more questions at the moment. Certain parties have become impatient." He glowered. "Myself included."

Doan glanced at Secret to see his reaction to those words, then back at the doctor. Ind was waiting patiently at the door.

"No, doctor," Doan Tana said. "I would just like to stay and watch."

Dr. Tengus let out a short chuckle and nodded. "Very well. You may stay, but keep your distance. I trust you understand."

The tone in his voice made very clear his thoughts on disobedience in his lab. Doan nodded and started walking towards Ind and the the door. Ind greeted her like an enthusiastic puppy, but stopped when Doan shook her head.

"Ind go? Doan stay?"

Doan nodded, which Ind returned with ten times the enthusiasm.

"Have fun, Doan, have fun!" With that, she waved and walked out the door.

Doan turned back before the door closed and watched Dr. Tengus start his work.

I cannot describe what followed. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, that neither Secret nor Doan Tana have ever spoken of what happened, so I don't actually know the specifics. Secondly, if I were to make a well-informed guess at the specifics and Secret were to listen to these recordings… I would rather avoid that. I suppose, as the third reason, I'd also like to avoid thinking about the whole thing, myself.

That established, let us just say that the day was starkly eye-opening for Daon Tana. When Dr. Tengus placed the last tool back in its place and said, "gunner Tana, that will be all," it took several seconds before Doan realized what it meant and called Ind.

The time until Ind arrived passed in an instant. Doan's mind just kept looping the day over and over until suddenly-

"Doan thirsty?"

Doan jumped and spun, stopping only when she saw Ind standing there in great distress, fumbling with three bottles of water that had seen better days. Each one had a variety of dents and one had a crushed spout. As Ind scrambled to save the one she wasn't holding in her hands, she started to slip and let go of one bottle to grab the falling one.

Doan grabbed both, but Ind still dropped the third one.

The lab went quiet, then Ind picked up the bottle that had hit the ground.

"Thank you," Doan said, and managed a flicker of a smile. She really was thirsty, and hadn't even realized. Before she started to drink, though, she turned and walked up to Dr. Tengus and offered the second bottle.

The doctor accepted gratefully, if with a little surprise, but Doan didn't have time to say anything before a clanking noise made her turn around.

"Finding out stuff, thirsty?"

Ind stood over the table, offering the last bottle to Secret.

Who was tied down.

And the enemy.

And didn't eat or drink, anyway.

Ind's brains are made of particularly low-quality soup. Probably tomato-based.

"What are you doing?"

Ind looked up at Dr. Tengus, then back at the bottle of water. She took a long look at the bottle before gesturing at Doan, then at Dr. Tengus. "Doan thirsty. Finding out stuff, thirsty." Then she pointed at Secret. "Finding out stuff… thirsty?"

Then, in the tone of somebody imparting hidden knowledge, she finished, "fun, but thirsty."

Something clicked for Doan. What Ind had said earlier, about finding stuff being fun… it hadn't meant anything at the time, but what if Ind had meant that Secret was exploring? Doan had been certain all the escape attempts had been, well, attempts to escape. But what if they hadn't been? What if Secret was looking for something, or exploring and mapping the facility?

The wasn't anything in this facility but Dr. Tengus' lab and Dr. Tengus himself. Those, Secret had "found" over a week ago. So, why was he exploring?

Oh, Dr. Tengus was yelling at Ind.

"That is a Tenno, you mutant sludge-head!"

Sludge might be going a little far. Depending on one's opinion on tomatoes.

Ind nodded, realization dawning. Then she looked down at Secret and said in a tone that was almost aggressive, "Tenno scum thirsty?"

I take it back.

Before the doctor could do anything rash, Doan stepped in and took hold of one of Secret's hands. "Ind," she said, "we're taking the Tenno back to its cell."

Ind nodded, grabbed the metal band across Secret's wrist, and paused. After a few seconds, she put her water bottle in Secret's hand so she had both of hers free to undo the bond. Doan, realizing she also had a hand full, simply put her bottle down on the table, put one hand on Secret's chest, and undid the bonds on his left side with the other hand.

Secret was looking between Ind and the water bottle in his hand, but lacking a face made it easy for him to hide what he was thinking.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can reveal that he was confused.

I know. Riveting mystery. Shut up. Moving on.

Seconds later, the trio was on their way out of hte lab. Doan had probably ruined one of the clasps on her armour, but it was now successfully jury-rigged to carry her water. Secret was still carrying Ind's water. Other than that, the procession looked the same as before.

-Oh! Prepare for docking.-

-No, Captain Vor's knocking. Of course it's her!-

-Sh, concentrating. Concentrating… there! Nice job, Cephalon Belyri. She sure can pilot a liset.-

-Wel- ah. Still dressing yourself, I see. That's alright, Secret damaged my sensors earlier. My condolences to Belyri, though.-

-I can, too! Look!-

-Yes, but it's a different _shade_ of green.-

-Quiet. Talk with Secret for a minute. I'm figure out my notes for another archive. We'll start in a bit.-

-The G3 incident.-

-I… suppose. Why? She gets the full archives the moment I upload them, anyway.-

-...theme song. Your name is...-

-I wish I could sigh. Can I sigh? Sigh. No. Damn. Fine, I'll call her over.-

For those organics curious, what followed was a rapid series of nonverbal communications that boil down to an invitation, an assurance that I would take care of the second coupled liset, and Cephalon Belyri coming as close to transmitting her complete consciousness as most of our kind ever come. I decided to explain this because the alternative would be a rather jarring unannounced shift in the situation under which the archiving was taking place.

We now return to the actual point of all this - the story.

Doan didn't take her eyes off Secret on the way back. After that day, she saw him in a different way. Worse, he stood straighter than usual, walked a little faster than most days. What Doan Tana had seen might have been less than Secret usually experienced. It made her shiver to think about.

Secret had to get out of here. Doan might have to-

It actually hurt to think about that. Doan almost let go of Secret and marched herself to the processing center to report the thought. Instead, she just abandoned the line of thought. It was safer that way. But when Secret was back in his cell, dirty and angry as ever, Doan finished her water and gave the bottle to Ind, then went back to see Dr. Tengus.

It was a quick walk back to the lab, much faster than when she was dealing with Secret and Ind.

The doctor was not happy. There were tools all over the floor when Doan arrived and he was breathing heavily. As the door opened, Tengus whirled to face her, screaming, "what?!"

A part of Doan thought that, if he hadn't wanted to be interrupted, there was a lock on the door.

Come to think of it, this might have been Doan's first real inkling of the intelligence quotient of the Grineer. I'm so proud of her.

Doan picked her way across the lab and, though it was rather a long way down, she knelt to pick up some tools and put them away.

"Leave them, leave them," Dr. Tengus snapped. "It's not as if they matter now, anyway."

That got Doan's curiosity.

"Why not, doctor? Didn't you learn a lot today?"

"No. Yes. No. Not enough!" He scowled at Doan. "Progress. Has been slow. I have been ordered to use more invasive methods.

Doan started. "But that could kill h- it!"

The smaller Grineer slammed his hand down on his work counter. "Exactly! We don't have the technology to prevent a self-destruct! It's a miracle we haven't lost this one already. But it's either this or turn our prize over to that blunt, Vor."

No. That couldn't happen. Captain Vor was a powerful Grineer, Doan was literally programmed to admire him, but she'd been told everything about his Ascaris device in one of Tengus' rants. The other option, though, was Secret's death. That meant…

The pain hit Doan again, cutting off the thought. She shook her head. It meant this was bad. That was all it meant.

"What are you going to do?"

Dr. Tengus' hand clenched to a fist. "That is none of your business, gunner."

Doan blinked and went back over what had just happened in her mind. She'd asked a question and been refused an answer. Not because the other person was distracted by a loud noise or somebody doing something stupid, but because…

Because he was keeping a _secret_.

Keep in mind that Doan was young at the time and not used to meeting the sort of Grineer who could do that. They are usually politicians, after all.

Doan Tana was, however, an intuitive sort, and she one-upped Dr. Tengus on the spot.

She lied.

Well, more of a fib, and I'm not ruling out beginner's luck its success, but she was learning.

Doan Tana said, "I captured it. I want to keep my prize."

The doctor glared up at her, uncaring, until she continued, "if I were you, I would study as much as I could before the Council made me break it."

Which would also give Doan the time to figure out-

Ow.

Something. Something about something.

Dr. Tengus waved Doan off, dismissing her to go wherever she wanted.

She went straight to Secret's cell. The guards challenged her until they realized who she was, and then she was able to send them away. After that, she walked up to Secret's cell and stood in front of the transparent partition.

Secret folded his arms. So did Doan. Minutes ticked past quietly while Doan figured out what to say, or whether she could say anything.

Oh, right.

-We're ready to start.-

-The part in the cell.-

-Well, it is important.-

-Exactly. Be quiet, brat. Listen.-

"They're going to kill you," Doan said. "You need…" she looked away, unable to finish the sentence. Her eyes caught on something and she changed the subject. "You kept the water bottle."

There it was, attached to his hip without any sort of clamp, just a fist-sized metal cylinder. Ind must have forgotten it.

Secret waved at her, which she thought was odd, since she'd arrived minutes ago. Then he put a finger to his neck height. Dr. Tengus was about that height, so maybe he was talking about him.

"Dr. Tengus?"

Secret nodded, then raised his hands beside his shoulders like he was carrying something. He finished by gesturing to Doan, then to himself.

He wanted her to bring Dr. Tengus to him?

"Why?"

He nodded and raised his hands as if to aim a gun at someone, and fired.

"I'm not doing that!" She couldn't even imagine offering Dr. Tengus up for… that. That was insubordination.

Secret tilted his head, then shrugged.

"I won't," she repeated.

Secret made a series of complicated gestures that Doan couldn't begin to interpret. She didn't even try. This conversation, whatever it was about, wasn't going the way she'd been hoping.

"I want to…" she trailed off. She couldn't say the words she wanted to, couldn't even think them properly without it hurting.

Secret crossed his forearms in front of his chest, then made a reaching and caging motion with his fingers.

Well, she'd only really tried to capture him the last time they crossed paths. He was making it seem like she did it every time. And besides…

"You let me," she said, a little defensively.

He gestured angrily to the bolt through his wrist. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. She certainly couldn't have taken him prisoner without it. And Secret really had almost let her capture him. Now that he was captured, he was stuck. So was she.

"I can't take it off," she said. She couldn't even consider it, because she was smart enough to know he'd escape without it.

Secret shook his head and raised five fingers, lowering one each second, counting down the time passing. Maybe he meant to wait? Did he think she'd be able to help the next day, the next time he was brought to Dr. Tengus?

The next time he was brought to Dr. Tengus. A shiver ran down her half-metal spine.

"I can't bring you, tomorrow," Doan tried to explain. Maybe she could figure out something later, but before something horrible happened. Maybe-

Secret stepped away from her and turned away. The conversation, whatever it had been, was over.

Doan tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind. She'd captured Secret, made him helpless with the Grustrag Bolt, and taken him to Dr. Tengus each day.

Doan Tana turned and left the cell.

-Well, that's Miss Tana's version.-

-You were a silent, faceless machine waving his arms around. What about your time with Grineer made you think she'd understand that?-

-The ones with all their limbs, obviously.-

-Well, it all worked out. You can still think of it as your first team-up if you want.-

-Look, if it bothers you so much, you can talk to her about it.-

-That's what I'm here for: good ideas. Now, can I get back to the story?-

-Yes, we'll get to your part. Unless you throw that. Belyri, could you keep an eye on ehr.-

-Thank you. It's nice to have another level head on board for once.-

-Oh, right. Can I skip the next bit? It's just Doan brooding a lot while that Ind clone babbles obliviously.-

-Please? ...we'll practically be skipping to your part.-

-Perfect.-

So easy.

-Nothing.-

The alarms went off around breakfast time the next day.

"Loud," Ind said, barely audible over the noise. "Rest."

Doan didn't know what the second word was about, but the alarms were another story. Secret had escaped again.

Doan agonized over what to do. In her case, that was literal. The headache grew to a level where she had to lean against the wall to stay standing. It pounded, cutting off her thoughts every time she tried to refuse the call to action.

The problem was that she knew Secret could escape if she didn't do something, and she'd had orders to keep him prisoner.

There were downsides to being smart enough to understand that her actions had consequences.

There was a clanking sound that distracted Doan out of her mental loop, and she blinked to see Ind knocking on her helmet.

"Help Doan," said the clone, still knocking. Doan nodded until Ind stopped, but then the alarms reminded Doan of what was going on, and the headache came back with a vengeance.

"Doan!" Ind yelled, and started pulling on Doan's hand. Doan stumbled forward, but she couldn't see clearly until Ind put her hand on the door's locking mechanism.

"Help," Ind finished.

Right, Doan thought. She had to open the doors, or Ind would be locked in one room. She couldn't do it on her own.

Doan's fingers flicked across the controls, and she had the lock undone in seconds, with a little help from her identification.

Ind danced through the doorway, pulling Doan along again, and didn't stop until they reached the next door.

They went that way for a while, and every time Doan started to get distracted, Ind would do something to grab her attention. Whether it was the loudest humming Doan had ever heard or trying to take Doan's gun, it always worked, and they made steady pace through the facility, even if Ind was leading the way and Doan had no idea where they were going.

Then, "sh," Ind said.

And it was. Quiet, that was. Silent, even, in the eerie way of an abandoned ship.

"Sh bad," Ind said, and Doan hoped she wasn't right.

There wasn't anything to be done about it, though. All that Doan could do was open the next door.

"Sh. Doc-"

And then the sound was gone. Just gone.

Complete silence.

Just like before, Doan stumbled. Without sound, it was like she couldn't see straight, couldn't balance.

In front of her, Ind clapped her hands together, head tilted sideways in confusion. She tried again a few more times, clearly wondering if something was wrong.

Yes, Doan wanted to tell her, something is wrong.

She managed to look up and, when Ind noticed her, the other grineer helped Doan get to her feet. Ahead of them was a door. Another door. There were four in this room, but that one… it was familiar.

Then the one beside them opened.

-Do you want it now?-

-Reveal? What reveal?-

-I… you realize I'm going to have to go back over the archive and edit everything if you want that.-

-Fine. Theme song at the dramatic reveal.-

Brat.

Please be better than her fashion sense.

Ind waved. Doan raised her Gorgon. How on target it was was anybody's guess.

Two Tenno stood in the doorframe. One was blue with gold and white trim, it had a head that looked like a fan. The other one, practically leaning on the first, was Secret. They didn't notice Doan and Ind at first, they were pointed at the other door, the one that led to Dr. Tengus' lab.

Doan fired and missed badly, her Gorgon kicking and punching scattered line into the wall and door the two Tenno were headed towards. One Tenno, the one with the fan-shaped head and shoulder piece, looked at the wall. Secret followed the path back to Doan.

Without even looking, the other one waved its - her - hand and the air rippled and slammed into Doan and Ind hard enough to throw them backwards. There was a second where Doan was upside down, then she was on her stomach, then Ind was on top of her. Their guns were nowhere in reach.

The blue Tenno was already in mid-air, leaping at them, a nasty pair of curved daggers in her hands.

Then, for some reason, she stopped dead and hit the ground hard. In another second, she was back up, but Doan was untangling herself from Ind and working her way to her feet, too. More importantly, she worked out what happened from the grip Secret had on the other Tenno's ankle.

The female one put her hands to her hips and just sort of left her knives there, then reached out to hit Secret, gesturing at the lab's door before turning away to finish off Doan and Ind.

The gunners' guns were still on the ground on the spot they'd been knocked away from. They were on the other side of the door, though. If Doan could lock the door, maybe they could run fast enough?

Secret grabbed the other Tenno's shoulder. The little shoulder. She whirled, and what followed, as far as Doan could tell, was exactly like two Grineer yelling at each other, except in complete silence.

Then one of them hit the other. I'm not saying which. I do not need any "he started it, she started it," on this ship. The point is, a fight broke out. Doan stood with a hand on the door mechanism, ready to lock it but unable to. Two Tenno were fighting right in front of her. She spent precious seconds watching them trade blows at blinding speed, flowing from move to move in a way she hadn't realized was possible. The few times she'd seen Tenno before, they'd been fighting Grineer. Those fights, it was always a strike or two, then moving on to the next target. This time…

This time, it quickly devolved into the two of them flailing their arms at each other like children. Not that Doan knew what children were, but she was thinking something along those lines.

Ind stepped forward to join in, arms already windmilling in a similar way, before the sound returned with a rush.

The sound, and the noise.

The alarms were blaring, and they should have been deafening after the moments of utter silence. They weren't. Not compared to the two Tenno. Their arms crashed against each other with a sound like weapons crates hitting each other.

It occurred to Doan that the Grustrag Bolt limited Secret's strength against Grineer, and that those two Tenno were probably hitting each other with enough force to dent starships.

She grabbed Ind's shoulder, calmly pulled her back - Ind still flailing her arms to mimic the Tenno - and locked the door.

Almost automatically, Doan reached for her radio. "This is gunner Doan Tana," she said, though she didn't know who was still there to hear. "There are two Tenno in the facility. Get Dr. Tengus out. Evacuate Dr. Tengus."

"Two?!" Dr. Tengus himself spoke across the radio. "How did this happen?"

Doan would have thought that was obvious, but she never was the sarcastic sort, so she said, "the prisoner probably-"

The clanging on the other side of the door stopped.

"Bad bad," Ind said helpfully.

Doan grabbed Ind's hand.

Then the door opened again, with two Tenno standing on the other side.

"Tenno scum," Ind said, waving happily with her free hand.

Secret raised his hand in a hesitant return wave.

Doan tried to drag Ind behind her, but the other Grineer wouldn't move.

"Ind," Doan said, as calmly as she could. "Run."

"Sh," Ind said back, not moving a centimeter.

The female Tenno's hand came forward in a flash and suddenly Doan had a blade at her throat.

Doan let go of Ind's hand and didn't move. She wasn't sure why she wasn't dead yet, but it was actually kind of nice. Not being dead, that was. She'd never really appreciated that before.

Ind looked between the Tenno and Doan, then brought her arms down on the Tenno's arm, windmill-style, just like she'd been trying before. This time, though, it hit. It didn't do much. Mostly, there were several clanging hits and the Tenno's arm fell a few centimeters each time, before it looked at Ind and withdrew its arm. Even without a face, Doan could swear it was looking at Ind with the same expression Doan sometimes had when the food dispenser acted up and gave her half-rations by accident.

"Bad Tenno scum," Ind scolded the Tenno.

It just shrugged and sheathed its daggers, then slapped Secret on the back, urging him forward.

"You're too late," Doan said, almost automatically. "Dr. Tengus is already gone."

Or, at least, he should be, by now. He'd better be.

Now Secret was definitely glaring at the other one. He had his hands on his hips, leaning forward at her, and just… glaring. The other just waved at him - which was, again, really weird, because they'd definitely met before - and gestured between him and Doan.

Secret stepped forward, gave what would have been an exaggerated sigh if Tenno breathed, and put a finger to his lips.

Doan blinked and, slowly, copied the gesture.

"Secret," she said.

Secret nodded, raising his other hand to point at himself. Then he dropped one hand and pointed at Doan.

Doan copied the gesture, pointing at herself. "Doan Tana," she said.

The second Tenno nodded quickly, then shoved herself forward, pointing at herself.

What was that supposed to mean?

"Sh," Ind said.

Ignoring the weirdness of having a conversation with two Tenno, Doan admitted, "I don't understand."

The Tenno lifted her shoulders up and dropped them, shaking her head, the same way Secret had when he'd "sighed". Then she put one finger to her "lips" and pointed at Secret. Then she pointed at Doan. Then, with a roll of her head that ended with her looking at Ind, she pointed at the second Grineer.

Catching on, Doan said, "Ind Cusd."

The Tenno nodded once, slowly, then pointed to herself.

But that wasn't fair. There weren't any clues. At least Secret had his little gesture. Doan didn't know anything about this new one.

"Tenno sh," Ind said. Doan looked over at her. The "sh" sound carried on, slowly getting quieter and quieter…

"Silence," Doan said. She looked back at the two Tenno. "Your name is Silence."

-Cue theme song?-

The Tenno female, Silence, smacked one hand into the other with a loud clang, and she and Secret nodded to each other several times and turned to leave.

-Well, you should have thought of that before starting your theme song at the end of the- look, sh. I'll embellish a bit and we'll let it run.-

So the two drama qu- I mean Tenno- strode over to the lab and started inputting commands into its door terminal. After a few seconds, they had it open and they stepped through with an air of triumph. Silence gave a little bow and handed Secret an Ignis.

Doan almost said something to that, but it was still two Tenno, and now one was holding an Ignis. Also, the other one had had a knife to Doan's throat less than a minute ago. It was probably best to leave them undisturbed.

For once, this time it helped to be pretty clever. No matter what Doan did, these two were going to escape. Therefore she couldn't be betraying the Grineer by not attacking them. If all went well, it looked like she'd live through this.

-Fine, I'll focus on you.-

Secret was holding the Ignis Silence had given him, almost unwilling to take it. Silence just patted him on the shoulder and flourished a hand out to the lab. Considering what she'd done to that Fomorian core all those months ago, there was no way she needed the weapon to destroy everything, but Secret was another matter.

As for what happened next, it didn't take much convincing. Silence stepped back and Secret blasted the lab with flames. In seconds, the entire room was on fire, leaving both Tenno lit by flickering orange light. Their armour glinted, shiny blue and silver metal standing out against the Grineer colours and etching themselves into Doan's mind.

For good measure, Silence threw in an extra ammunition pack, which exploded as the fire ate at it and built the fire up even higher.

Satisfied, both Tenno stepped back, gave one last wave - which Ind returned, though she also picked up her rifle and aimed it at them - and ran. Like the security protocols weren't even there, the two headed straight out of the facility, job complete.

-Well, no, because you came up with the plan practically alone.-

-I know. I'm sorry. You'll get him eventually. He's not Alad V. At least this one will stay dead when you kill him.-

-Yes, we'll do that one next time. Now, get some sleep or whatever you brats do. I'm going to talk with Belyri.-

-You don't even know what that means.-

-Brats.-


	5. Help

"Doan strong!"

"Doan Tana is strong! Doan Tana is strong!"

"Doan brave!"

"Doan Tana is brave! Doan Tana is brave!"

"Doan hero!"

"Doan Tana is a hero! Doan Tana is a hero!"

Doan flinched at every cheer, especially when Ind started up something new. The thing about soup is that it flows well if you know how to guide it, and Ind… well, Ind had just enough talent to be dangerous.

Which was why Doan Tana was standing in front of four squads of Grineer being hailed as a hero.

Well, not standing, exactly. More trying unsuccessfully to flee.

Then Commander Dewkk tromped around the corner and saw what was happening.

"What in the Queens' names is going on here!?"

Commander Dewkk was a few orders of magnitude louder than he was clever, but he got results. Every single Grineer in the room stopped instantly, including Doan.

Dewkk glared around, looking for somebody to drag off for atterax whipping. He glared a particularly long time at Doan, then gave the rest of the Grineer a once-over and barked, "back to your posts!"

They all turned to leave, but Dewkk barked one last order.

"Except you, Gunner Tana."

Doan stopped. Most people didn't talk to her like that anymore, not since she'd "run off" a pair of honest-to-Queens Tenno scum from Doctor Tengus' lab. Commander Dewkk felt differently.

I have a theory that he had a permanent crick in his neck that made him so cranky, which would also explain why his head was always at a bit of a tilt.

When the rest of the Grineer had left - Ind throwing a last look at Doan before being pulled away by the group - Doan and Commander Dewkk stood alone in the hallway.

Dewkk gave a grunt and waved for Doan to follow him. She did, not because he'd have her whipped if she disobeyed, but because the fastest way to get away from a Commander was usually to just go along with whatever they were planning. It should work just as well with Dewkk.

The Commander didn't wait for the mood to settle before he started talking.

"I don't like you, Gunner Tana," was the first thing he said, which at least started the conversation off on a positive note.

An honest sort of positive note, obviously, not a friendly one.

"You should be dead," he continued rudely. "You and your partner should have been scumbait months ago, and many times since then."

Doan, wisely, said nothing until Dewkk glared straight at her and asked, "how did you survive meeting two Tenno?"

"It's as Gunner Cusd says, sir."

"They were scared of you?" The commander gave a laugh that was more of a bark.

"No. They came through the door, saw us, and left. They must have gotten bored."

"Bored."

Most Grineer cannot sound skeptical. It is beyond their vocal range. I am told, however, that Commander Dewkk gave it a very good try in this instance.

"It has been known to happen, sir."

The commander went silent because, of course, he couldn't deny the fact. Even back in those days, Tenno often ignored enemy combatants, leaving soldiers and machines to watch a blur pass by, take or destroy some vital objective, and disappear, never to be heard from again. Effective, if a little insulting. It is a good thing the combatants of the Origin System have little in the way of self-esteem.

Especially after encountering Tenno.

"And," Doan reminded her fellow clone, "Doctor Tengus escaped that confrontation alive, sir. Our mission was technically successful."

"The Tenno escaped."

"One of our missions was successful," Doan corrected herself.

The male grunted and walked on.

"I had more successful missions afterwards," Doan insisted as the pair walked through sparsely-populated parts of the base.

"Against the Infestation and Corpus," Dewkk agreed in a tone that said he didn't agree at all. "You lost three commanders in that time."

"The Grineer Empire expects a certain number of losses," Doan said cautiously.

"Commander Sen Delp was spaced."

"... yes..."

"He was stationed on Phobos at the time."

Doan laughed nervously. "It was… unusual…" she mumbled, unsure what else to say.

Incidentally, the escape velocity of Phobos is naturally around 11.39 meters per second. While artificial gravity brings this up to fifty meters per second around Grineer installations, a particularly industrious individual can find ways around this with surprisingly little effort and a lot of advice from a basically intelligent cephalon.

"How many missions did you take part in for Delp?"

Doan frowned. "Five missions. That is part of my record, commander."

Dewkk sent her a glare that would have said he didn't like her implication if he'd been smart enough to understand what an implication was. Since he didn't, it was probably just a normal commander glare over Doan having said something irrelevant.

Irrelevant, like talking about what was in her file when he was discussing her history. Well, at least Grineer do paperwork. The universe is full of small miracles, and some of them are literate Grineer.

"Five missions where few other than your squad and commander survived." He might have been implying something. He was definitely leading up to something.

"We serve as the Queens will," Doan cut him off with a platitude. "Those who died were replaced with better stock."

Unlikely.

Dewkk gave another grunt and moved on, successfully distracted. "Your next commander survived nineteen missions, all against Infested forces. You took part in only twelve of those."

"I was injured, sir. I would have recovered more quickly, but I was kept for study."

Injured, she said. Yes, and kept for study because her injury was the result of a suit breach and a technocyte infection that she carved out with a sheev and had a Scorch trooper cauterize for her. The fact that she survived was enough reason to keep her on hand for research even after it was confirmed she'd burned every bit of the virus from her system.

"Immediately following your return, Commander Oga Dui was killed by laserfire."

"A loss for the Grineer."

"Killed by laserfire," Commander Dewkk repeated, "in combat with Infested."

Doan nodded expectantly, as if waiting for the other clone to continue.

"There's more," the male continued, "Commander Ple Snow, died when he wasn't provided with a life support pack during an anti-boarder purge. A Rathuum recruiter, drowned in a food dispenser accident. A pilot for your squad's dropship reportedly sleepwalked out an airlock."

The Rathuum recruiter, a man the size of a Kuva Guardian, would have been fine if Grineer didn't insist on wearing their armour everywhere.

As for Doan Tana, she took the news of so many accidents very well. Though her teeth gritted and her eye twitched slightly, she met each new assas- that is, accident with the stoicism of a perfect soldier.

"Are you going to say anything about the deaths, Gunner Tana?" Commander Dewkk asked.

"No, sir," she answered in a perfect monotone. "The Grineer Empire moves on and we'll have to do the same."

Another grunt.

For those wondering at Doan's ability to play dumb and her remarkable success at it, let us take a moment to appreciate the truly staggering number of role models she had in the endeavour and how well they lowered the expectations of even other Grineer.

"Things seem to turn out pretty good for you a lot, Gunner Tana," Dewkk growled. "Too good. Too much. I don't know why, but I don't like it. I'm warning you, I'll be watching. The higher-ups already know. If I tell them about anything weird going on, there'll be invest- inv- others checking what happened."

"Yes, sir." Doan nodded, then asked, "sir, have you sent transmissions about your investigation?"

Dewkk grunted a vague affirmative, at which Doan sighed in a way that sounded aggravated, but was actually probably worried.

"It would be best to leave the deaths be…" Doan trailed off, looking around. "I think we should turn around."

"Why?" Dewkk asked, not slowing or changing direction.

"I just…" Doan reached for some reason before settling anticlimactically on, "I think it's too bright outside."

It wasn't the worst possible excuse; they were on a base on Mercury. Unfortunately, Grineer and comfort go together as well as Tenno and reasonable firepower. The fact that nobody else overheard Doan Tana's excuse was the only thing that saved her reputation, and it didn't do anything to persuade the one person who'd heard it.

"You don't need to see to tell me about Gunner Cusd," he barked, continuing on his way.

That got Doan's attention, even if she should have leapt on the chance to rid herself of the dunce. It would have freed up her time for more important things, like polishing her armour or reading poetry.

-No, Grineer don't actually do that. When did you get back?-

-Welcome back. Do you really think Grineer would waste that much time fixing up armour that looks like _that_?-

-Correction, _I'm_ the one who cleans your armour after every mission. Your armour, your weapons, and the floor and walls, you animal.-

-I _am_ the ship! Anyway, shut up, I was in the middle of something.-

"Ind?" Doan asked. "What does she have to do with this?"

"That's what you're going to tell me," Dewkk answered, scanning through a series of doors to get outside the facility. "Tell me enough, and I might believe your loyalty to the Empire."

"Sir," Doan said firmly, "Ind is loyal and strong. Sometimes she needs to be reminded of where her gun is or helped with the food dispenser, but she is a good soldier. She shoots lots of Infested and Corpus and the other soldiers like her."

The commander grunted, stepping outside the base and into the bright sunlight. The sand didn't blow because there wasn't any wind in the base area, but it still covered the walkways in a thin dusting of beige grains. Dewkk dragged his feet, kicking the dust aside with each step. Doan followed, eyes scanning the area and especially watching up above.

"The soldiers like her," Dewkk echoed, "and they like you, too. You are popular and dangerous, and the Empire can use that."

"Yes, sir," Doan said enthusiastically, nodding and still scanning the area. "We could talk about that inside if you wanted, after we found Gunner Cusd."

When the male didn't object directly, Doan continued, "if we talk to Gunner Cusd soon, she can tell you where she was when all of the accidents happened. It could help your investigation."

There was a glare from the commander, probably over Doan's repeated easy use of a five-syllable word, but then he nodded. Doan practically punched the air when he sighed and said, "yes, that is a good idea."

Only, he didn't move. He stopped there, in the middle of the path, and looked out at the sky.

"Sir," Doan insisted, "I think it would be best to meet Ind soon, in case we're called out on a mission."

"Quiet," Commander Dewkk barked. "You don't give orders to-"

The commander's head exploded. It exploded in exactly the way that a Grineer helmet does when impacted by a Vectis shot modded with serration damage mods, charged chamber, and blast damage. Which was a coincidence, obviously, as any Tenno who reads this will assure Doan Tana if she ever asks them. After all, anything could cause a Grineer's head to explode in that manner.

-What? What are you talking about? I'm not acting suspicious. You're acting suspicious. I was only telling the story of how several Grineer involved with Doan had mysterious accidents in quick succession a few years ago. Like the commander who put her in so much danger with the Infested being killed by a friendly laser fire accident, or Kela's representative, who was going to take her to live out her career as an executioner but somehow drowned in a food dispenser accident, or the pilot who kept almost forgetting her in dangerous warzones, the one who took a long walk out an airlock.-

-Wait, what? I mean, of course you had nothing to do with the pilot's sleepwalking. All unfortunate accidents. I'm finishing the story now.-

Doan Tana, for mysterious and completely unfounded reasons, turned to face an unoccupied tower nearby and screamed in an exasperated tone, "stop helping me!"

Then she threw her hands up into the air and kicked the body of Commander Dewkk, then waited as two guards ran up the walkway to see what had happened.

"Gunner Tana," one of them called as they came close enough to see the body, "what happened? Are you alright?"

"Yes," Doan sighed, pulling off her faceplate to pinch the bridge of her nose. "Commander Dewkk had an accident. He didn't maintain his helmet."

Both soldiers looked down at the commander's body, looked at each other, and promptly returned to their posts where they could take off and inspect their helmets for any malfunctions.

Doan watched them go, looked back up at the place where absolutely nobody was and therefore really shouldn't be attracting her attention. She threw her hands into the air one more time before sitting down beside the body of Commander Dewkk and waiting for Gunner Ind to arrive.


	6. Boss

Doan Tana was in charge.

It was horrible.

That's not to say she was bad at it. Nor is it making a statement as to the deplorable moral character of the Grineer in general and Grineer squads led by the odd Sergeant with more than one and a half brain cells in particular. Rather, it refers to the personal experience of being in charge of a squad of Grineer troops, which is rather like being put in charge of three territorial kavats, each with a unique and spectacular disease, and told that they must be kept within two meters of each other at all times, but must not be allowed to play, fight, or get distracted in any way.

As I said, it was horrible.

Before we begin this particular story, it may be relevant to know that there are usually two types of Grineer selected for command. The first are those who have impressed their superiors. The second are those who have disappointed their superiors. Given the… mysterious casualties… surrounding Doan in the period leading up to her promotion, one might, possibly, at least consider the chance… thatshewasbeingpunished. Maybe.

She has let us know we're forgiven. Not that the matter has anything to do with us, of course.

In any case, the story. It begins, as such things do, at the beginning, with Doan's first mission as Sergeant.

-Secret. Welcome back.-

-How is she?-

-And you? How are you?-

-You know, Kara could be lying. There's always -

-Alright. I'll just… tell the story, then.-

Shall we skip the roll call? Let's skip the roll call. There are maybe two and a half of these that live long enough for even the most rabidly curious to care about.

There were twelve Grineer under Doan's command, mostly lancers and troopers, along with two butchers and scorch. For her first mission, she was sent to a Corpus base on Venus. Simple, really, until…

Doan Tana slammed the ground hard enough to knock back the moa trying to get around the series of computer terminals she was using for cover, then she shot it with her gorgon. Shot it, and held the trigger, sweeping it and trying her best to push back, if not kill, more of the swarm.

She darted a glance around. There was one other squad left alive, and half of hers. The scorch and both butchers were dead, none of them knowing the meaning of the word cover. Probably literally.

Across the way, a lightning bolt hit another series of computer terminals, which ignited and blinded the other squad's commander. He stumbled, stepped out from cover, and caught another bolt from a lanka in the chest.

In the space of two exhausted breaths, Doan Tana was left as the most senior soldier in the assault.

Two breaths, and she didn't waste another.

"Fall back!" she yelled. Started walking backwards, something she couldn't have done before her hip was fixed, and ordered one of her soldiers to throw their last grenade.

Three soldiers stood dumbfounded at the idea of Grineer retreating and a few others simply started running because they hadn't been told to cover their own retreat. They died and skidded across the floor until their armour's self-destruct mechanisms activated, vaporizing them.

Doan kept shooting, trying her best to aim at anything looking her way while backpedaling as fast as she could. Two soldiers kept up with her, along with another four from the other squad.

"Pop the bubble," she ordered, concentrating her fire on the nullifier's shields. With him down, or at least with his shields overwhelmed, they'd stand a chance of scaring off the Corpus following them.

The shield went down in seconds, and so did two more Grineer. Doan's armour was scorched by a few lucky shots from a dera, but the amalgamated squad managed to take cover in time for her to get away unscathed.

"Does anybody have a grenade?!"

Nobody did. They'd all been used up earlier in the fight.

Doan growled and kicked a computer monitor. When it came loose, she had an idea, and wrenched it free. She ducked, then stood and heaved the block of metal and silicon as far as she could.

It didn't quite hit the mark, but it did the job anyway, startling the nullifier from out of the cover he'd taken before his shields recharged.

The other Grineer did the rest of the job.

It could have been coordination. It was probably luck. Doan was not very good at the micromanaging her troops needed back then.

In the end, the Grineer retreat left Doan with two members of her squad and one from the other. They made it out alive, though the Grineer dropship almost left them to die.

Miss Doan was whipped for her failure. Three lashings with an atterax, enough to kill most Grineer. The muscles in her back have since been replaced with cybernetic weave.

The executioner and those who ordered her whipping have also been replaced, for similar reasons.

It is a relief to say that Doan did not take part in any more missions as disastrous as her first. Over the course of several more missions, her entire squad was replaced several times. Some learned to listen to her, and those lived more than one mission, but still not many.

It wasn't until weeks later that Doan figured out how to give orders properly. And a little intimidatingly. One can never hear Miss Tana yell, "turn this ship around right now!" without being a little worried she's about to start shooting things.

-I don't blame you. If I were you, I still might not let her near my fleshy bits.-

-No, I don't actually have - hey, get away from there! I'm not Infested, you cheeky brat!-

-One of these days I'm going to drop you out an airlock.-

-I'm sure I could find one somewhere around here. Now do you want to hear about the Hyenas or not?-

-Of course she told me. She likes me. I'm charming.-

-Airlock. One of these days.-

Doan Tana was part of a similar assault on Venus, part of a drawn-out and generally fruitless offensive, when her turning point came.

The attack had bogged down in a room quickly filling with Grineer, a massive room of raised walkways, vaulted ceilings, and pillars reaching all the way up to support transport rails and the ceiling itself. On the other side of the room were lines of proxies and nullifiers supported by shield ospreys, a nearly impenetrable defensive line that couldn't push forward without losing cohesion and being torn to shreds. Lots of Grineer were going to die, but it wasn't exactly considered a sacrifice in the Queens' minds. Victory was inevitable.

Grineer doctrine of throwing bullets at problems until they go away is disconcertingly effective.

With the Corpus on the verge of breaking, squads of Grineer started charging, breaking off from the advancing wall. The Corpus pulled back, the Grineer spread out, and that was when the Hyenas struck.

For those unaware, Hyenas are the worst. They jump around, stick to walls, light nearly everything on fire when they're not freezing it solid, and either way they fill the whole thing with bullets for good measure. -Tell them, Secret.-

-Yeah, exactly!-

-Right. I forgot.-

-No, didn't get any of it. I never actually set up the equipment to record… well, anything but me. Sorry.-

-I said I was sorry. Look, I'm sure most Tenno get the idea. Jumpy, armoured, shields, annoying powers and they hunt in packs. They're like four-legged Tenno.-

Well, he took that well. As I'm sure all the Tenno will. I am hidden in a ship in the Void most of the time, so I'm not too worried.

It was a joke, though, so everyone knows.

That's all I need, an army of murderblenders with a grudge.

Right, so I'll make a note to practice my Vay Hek impression later and tell you about Doan Tana's encounter with the Hyenas now, shall I?

It was gruesome. A pack of three machines, each bigger than a bombard, leaping into squads of Grineer and doing all the nasty things they could do. Grineer were burned or melted, frozen and shattered, shocked or thrown about. Naturally, this didn't lead to much panic, mostly because Grineer tend not to be the sort to worry about imminent death. They do charge Tenno, after all.

Doan had a little more common sense. She took one look at the Hyenas ripping apart her comrades, then a second look at all the bullets missing them, then a third for good measure, just to check on the Corpus who had, up until seconds ago, been up against a wall. She came to the sensible conclusion.

"Crap," she said, or something along those lines.

"Pull back!" she yelled at her squad, not quite in the right tone.

A few did pull back, the ones who had lived through a mission or two with her. The others stopped, but only to stare at her gormlessly.

Common theme amongst them. It's an easy reaction, and goodness knows the poor things need a few of those to fall back on.

She tried again.

"Pull back and regroup! Scorpions, on me. I need a bombard and two commanders. You! Get them, now!"

The squad formed up around her fast, except for the one she'd told to play messenger, who scurried off as fast as his remarkably properly-cloned legs could take him.

In less than a minute, two more squads were dead and Doan had an audience of commanders and a bombard on the way. The Hyenas darted in and out of the Grineer squads, running along walls and under walkways and shrugging off the few bullets that hit them. Worse, the Corpus had regrouped and were starting to provide the Hyenas covering fire.

First, Doan explained her plan. Then, when that didn't work, she used smaller words and much shorter sentences. That wasn't the trick, though. The trick was in how she said it. Even the commanders and the bombard, who technically outranked her, ran to their positions at the sound of her voice.

Doan, being rather tall, was able to keep an eye on most everything that was going on. There were certain spots she was pretty sure were safe to stand, and she took her squad and four selected scorpions with her to one of them, surrounding one of the Grineer commanders in the process.

At a gesture, everybody moved into position.

Then Doan Tana yelled.

"NOW!"

The commander disappeared without flash or sound, and in his place stood a yellow Hyena.

Four scorpion grapples hit it and four lancers grabbed the scorpions' arms and helped them pull tight.

It can be assumed that somewhere in the ensuing chaos, a few of the scorpions figured out why they'd been told to fire on a Grineer commander.

"Fire!"

At least two lancers joined in with a helpful, "combat formation bravo!" and everyone started shooting.

Hyena NG struggled and screamed, but within seconds it was reduced to a flaming wreck.

Satisfied that the thing was dead, Doan looked around to see how the rest of her plan had gone.

The electric Hyena, Hyena Th, was currently being dealt with by one squad of Grineer. They had it held tight and were pouring bullets at it. As for the other, the bombard had apparently found a friend, and so two commanders, a bombard, and a napalm were all fighting the freezing Hyena, Hyena LN2. Both engagements seemed to be going well.

Then a Lanka round hit one of the scorpions holding the mechanical monster and everything went wrong. The scorpion died, obviously, but worse happened as the electricity traveled down its grapple line. Hyena Th flashed, the other three scorpions convulsed, and every Grineer for twenty meters stumbled towards them.

And two of the Grineer who stumbled were the bombard and napalm wrestling Hyena LN2. A second after that, the bombard was frozen solid and the two commanders were… well, they weren't running, so good decisions were not being made.

As for what was happening to the squad of Grineer fighting the Th, I hesitate to put it in detail, since I've never actually seen combat, myself. Doan tells me it was truly dreadful. Well, she says, "worse than usual," but that boggles my imagination, I don't mind saying.

-What part of that made it sound like I wanted to know?-

-Stop.-

-Stop.-

-Please stop.-

-You Tenno are sick, you know that? Someday I'm going to get assigned a nice, peaceful job. I could start that Rathuum business up again and actually get paid to insult Grineer. Wouldn't that be nice?-

-Well, obviously. Kela de Thaym was a Grineer. Even Nef Anyo has the sense to not be around the arenas he invites Tenno to, and he's-

-Oh, right.-

Doan Tana started yelling. Not the usual Grineer yelling, but the useful kind she'd just picked up.

"Squad, get that blue one pinned down! Don't die! GO!"

The group ran off, but Doan hesitated, looking between Th and LN2. Neither were under control, but she hadn't yet figured out how to stop the one freezing everything in its path, not at the same time as Th, and definitely not if she couldn't find anymore scorpions to throw at it.

She moved towards the LN2, unsure of what she would do once she reached it. Just getting a good look at how it fought and not getting anything irreplaceable blown off as she approached were her priorities.

Only she wasn't moving fast enough. One of the commanders took a glancing blow from an invisible blast of air and his arm shattered. Then the napalm took a direct hit and froze solid.

And kept moving. There was a moment of stuttering motion and Doan probably imagined the cracking sound across the battlefield, and then the napalm lunged forward to try tackling the Hyena again.

Doan started yelling for more napalms to come with her.

She was getting good at yelling very quickly. Which was probably why, when she reached the LN2, she had a lot of napalms with her. All of them, in fact. Some heard her, some took up the call, and some just saw all the others going somewhere and decided to follow.

For the best, really. Quite a few of them died. That's what happens when you charge a Hyena with an entire army of Corpus giving it covering fire.

Doan didn't even try to fight the creature when she reached it. It was killing the first napalm in front of it and the two commanders were steadily losing all the reinforcements they called in. Enough Grineer had died in that room to pile up chest high, if not for automated self-destruct. So Doan let the napalms reach the LN2 before her. Several were frozen solid soon after, but every napalm latched onto the Hyena, keeping it from getting away.

That was all Doan needed.

With enough bullets, even creatures as big as Hyenas die. With enough fire, anything melts. The napalms burned ice and Doan's gorgon smashed it to bits at the same time. By the end, Doan's minigun was dry, many more napalms had frozen or been killed by the oncoming Corpus. One was even burned, though not enough to kill him.

Then her gun flew from her hands and she stumbled, pulled backwards.

Behind her, Hyena Th was doing a lot better than it deserved, fighting so many Grineer alone. Dozens of weapons had been torn from their owners' hands and a handful of Grineer were trying to stand up again. Given Grineer armour designs, this was a little harder for some of the more heavily armoured ones. When Hyena Th came out of its spin and landed on the ground and the pulling force finally ended, those flailing bombards were the first to die.

Doan grabbed her weapon and a stray ammunition pack on the ground, then radioed her squad.

"Keep it busy," she said. "Kill it or not, but don't die." Then she signaled to the two commanders. Both alive, by some miracle. Dumb luck, most likely. She signaled to the napalms, too.

Then she gave every Grineer's favourite order.

"Charge!"

That brought cheers. Lots of Grineer commanders make their troops do boring things, like take cover or cover each other as they advance. All very effective, but apparently not much fun. Grineer enjoy a reckless charge. It makes them less grumpy for a little while.

Don't get your hopes up. "A little while" lasts about as long as the charge itself. Grineer are just grumpy. That's why we don't let Tyl Regor have nice things.

This particular charge, though, could have lasted hours, not so much fighting as dying their way across the room towards the Corpus lines. Nothing the Grineer did could kill the Corpus, not with their shields. The Hyenas had turned the tide. The Grineer were going to lose, they were going to be overrun, and there would be nowhere to run.

Doan beckoned the two commanders near her and started explaining her plan. Luckily, it wasn't complex, it just needed perfect timing.

An anti-Moa knocked down a charging line of napalms. Doan ran around the pulse. Doan ordered one commander to stop and three napalms to cover him, and she kept running. Two napalms had their armour eaten away by energy beams and fell forward, dead. Doan took cover behind one of the survivors.

Then they passed through the lead nullifier's shield as a wave of flesh and metal.

This would have been the perfect time for that nullifier to panic. If he'd just turned and run, some very unfortunate things might have been avoided, not least of which happened to him in particular. That he didn't is due to some truly impressive brainwashing techniques on the part of the Corpus, rather than any inherent lack of intelligence in him in particular. Unfortunately, whether you're born with soup brains or have them mushed by power-mad profit-mongers with bad taste in fashion, it all ends with a profound lack of common sense.

And death.

That nullifier was really, really dead.

And just in time, too. Or, well, how to phrase it? Doan Tana tried to stop the other Grineer from killing the nullifier too soon because his shield was protecting them. This was more than a little beyond her companions' strategic acumen, though, so the nullifier was just…

Really, really dead.

Which left Doan in the middle of enemy territory with a whole bunch of heavily armoured Grineer surrounded by a much larger bunch of even more heavily armed Corpus.

There are words that describe this strategic position, and they are not said in polite company.

Napalms started dying. Doan grabbed the commander she'd brought with her, turned to look back at the haphazard Grineer lines, and saw exactly what she needed.

"Now," she said into her radio. Then, to the commander at her side, she yelled, "now!"

Then she ran.

Doan Tana has had occasion to be thankful for the mending of her hip in the years since Secret acted on that particular whim, and though it doesn't add much to her sprinting speed, she has thanked Secret several times for this particular moment in her life.

-Are you… you're blushing!-

-No, I didn't mean it like that. It's just that you should learn to appreciate sincerity once in a while. You made a good woman's life better with that choice, and she appreciates it.-

-You need to learn to accept compliments graciously. It's part of growing up.-

-Nobody should be more comfortable being insulted than being thanked, Operator. We will talk about this later.-

Doan ran as fast as cyborg clone legs could carry her, leaving several napalms behind and sideswiping a small moa on the way.

One and a quarter seconds later, the reason for her speed became very evident.

Hyena Th appeared in the middle of the napalms, spinning like a top.

Most significant abilities used in the present day have impressive friend-or-foe differentiation. Hyena Th's magnetic tornado is not one of those. Napalms had their weapons torn from their hands as they skidded on metal boots towards the beast. All around, nullifier shields flickered and died, moas fell over, ospreys had their flight thrown off, and weapons of all kinds flew through the air and clattered to the ground.

Doan took a step forward and was pulled two steps back. She threw her gorgon rifle down, grabbed two moas and threw them behind her in a vain attempt to move away from the spinning Hyena, which was bashing apart anything unfortunate enough to get caught up in its pull. Anything that wasn't stretched into noodle by the force gradient near it.

-I am not coming up with a different word for that.-

-It means the change in force over an area in a certain direction.-

-Things were getting pulled a lot near it and less when they were further away. When they got close, it was like things were having the closer parts pulled and the further parts not pulled. They got stretched.-

In retrospect, Doan was fine. Mostly. The only problem was that she didn't have the traction to stay in place and started being pulled backwards. With all her armour, it was no wonder. She took three steps forward and with each one she was pulled further back than she could step. She grabbed desperately to a Corpus soldier but only dragged him backwards to. Then she was clinging to him as her feet left the ground.

Then the sound of gunfire filled the entire room. Not that they hadn't been shooting before, but, well, how to put this?

Grineer are not good shots. They are not bad, even Doan with her poor eyesight, but they are not likely to hit swiftly-moving targets without as much dakka as can be supplied.

In this case, however, they received a helping hand. Hyena Th had kindly supplied its own approximation of Mag's Bullet Attractor technique on itself.

One can imagine why this feature was later removed from the model.

The last Hyena was filled with all of the bullets. Then, once the Grineer had reloaded en masse, it was filled with a rather lighter smattering of bullets, the others of which were spread generously amongst the other Corpus forces. Who died.

The Corpus did not panic and Doan Tana very nearly died in the chaos that ensued, but the disruption of their shields had been so decisive that the fighting did not last much longer. Soon, the Grineer were victorious and Doan again had reason to be hailed as a hero. This time, a little more honestly.

I would like to say that Doan was properly recognized for her efforts, perhaps with a promotion or at least favour from her superiors. This was not the case. All Doan received was the opportunity to choose who was used to replenish her squad.

At least her squad listens to her now. Though why she chose to bring Ind Cusd on as her second in command, I can't begin to imagine.

Now, I think that's enough for the moment. I have other business to attend to.

-Secret, Belyri called. She wants you to take Silence song-hunting. Some place called Fortuna…-


	7. Now?

"Now?"

"No."

"Now?"

"No."

"Now?"

Doan Tana turned and clonked Lancer Pag over the head. Hard.

A clang echoed through the Orokin halls. It sounded a little hollow.

Doan cringed. Corrupted were turning to look in the direction of her squad's hiding spot, and Grineer are particularly bad hiders.

Of course, it really was their own fault that there were so many Corrupted in the first place. Not Doan's, of course, she would have counseled against it, but hers was part of the seventh wave of troops that were sent in. That meant they were part of the second wave of Grineer that got to fight.

I'll give you a hint how that worked out.

The sixth wave were outnumbered five to one.

So was the seventh wave.

So Doan and her squad crouched in their hiding spot as dozens of Neuraled… Sentried… Neural Sentried… ah, whatever, dozens of mind-controlled Grineer looked around in suspicion.

Lancer Pag, a credit to his people, managed to stay quiet after having been hit hard enough. The rest of the squad, selected by Doan's usual Darwinian methods, were also quiet.

None of them had any ideas, of course. Those were Doan's job.

On the one hand, it's probably a good thing they left the thinking to Doan. On the other, a suggestion once in a while probably wouldn't hurt. That, at least, was Doan's opinion.

The problem was, Doan technically didn't have a plan. She had a backup plan, of sorts, but it was the sort of, "wait and hope," thing that tends not to go very far in warfare, according to historical records.

Lots of dead folk in history. Lots of dead folk with very short lives who figured hope was going to get them through.

-Shush, I'm getting to that.-

Of course, most of those folk weren't friends with Tenno or devilishly clever artificial intelligences.

-See? Observation, tension, reveal. Or is it foreshadowing? Stop throwing off my rhythm!-

In that moment, one of the troopers, who will remain ignominiously nameless, rose from the hiding spot and yelled, "now!"

Doan grabbed the arms of both soldiers beside her. Ind did the same. In a split second, every one of the Grineer hiding behind cover was holding all the others down. Therefore, they were safely hidden and behind cover as their second-least-intelligent squad member (mustn't forget Ind) ran approximately three point two steps before being filled with enough laser fire to empty out his armour.

The squad heard a clatter of armour hitting the ground and Scorpion Leeh leaned out to see what the Corrupted were doing now.

The Corrupted had put two and two together and were coming for their hiding spot.

Doan let go of her squadmates' arms and picked up her gun, but signalled the others to wait. If the Corrupted were close enough, there was at least the chance of putting their guns around the corner and shooting blindly.

The squad hefted their guns, Doan drew in a deep breath, opened her mouth, and yelled, "N-"

Enter, stage right. Tenno.

Bullets flew. A lot of them. Dakka to put a squad of Grineer to shame. Lancer Drruhg actually sat back down and started fiddling with his rifle petulantly. Most of the rest of the squad just ducked.

This is one of the few situations in which Doan Tana is, consistently, a soup-for-brains. Either she has yet to figure out that Tenno are dangerous or she just doesn't care, because she stood there, watching the Tenno go by, like it wouldn't blow her head off with a stray bullet and not lose a second's momentum.

Doan Tana is also very lucky, because the Tenno did not lose a second's momentum but also didn't blow her head off.

Praise the Void for small miracles.

I have been told, at length, about this particular Tenno. He was a Rhino Prime in a nearly blinding combination of white, black, and gold, with shoulders about three parsecs wide and a… well… you know.

Not that Doan is interested in that sort of thing, being a clone.

-No, I'm not telling you what I'm talking about. Don't you have more important things to be doing right now? There. There's an alert. Go do that.-

Ind snuck over, grabbed Doan by the an armour valve, and pulled her down onto the floor. This meant that when the next two Tenno ran by, everyone in the room was apparently dead.

There were a few seconds of utter stillness.

Ind made an exploding motion with her hands, complete with a quiet sound effect, and giggled softly. A few of the newer members of the squad stared at her, unsure of what the sound she was making meant.

The giggling, not the explosion. Grineer are rather experienced at identifying explosions. Most come out of the can experienced at that. The priorities of Grineer education systems have been mentioned before now.

That was when Doan stood up and started running in the direction the Tenno had gone. Her squad, used to relying entirely on Doan's risk assessment abilities over their own, followed her without question.

It wasn't an entirely stupid move. She had a plan. The plan included ogling Tenno for longer than the two-fifths of a second it would take one to kill her, but she still had a plan.

Whatever the Tenno were doing, she thought, they'd been up to it for days now, wiping out weeks of work in so little time that most Grineer could count it, even the ones with missing fingers. They appeared, stole all the salvage the Grineer had found, and then destroyed the portals into the Orokin towers.

Vay Hek was Angry. Vay Hek was always angry, but this time he was Angry.

Am I emphasizing that right? Oh, I'll just capitalize it in the transcript. Hooray for technology.

No, wait, writing was invented after audio recordings, right? I can never remember.

-Right, exactly! Everybody talks, but writing takes education. It's also obviously a superior communication method. It's incredible how easy it is to corrupt an audio file.-

-If that's how you want to think of it. I really don't think that's why Warframes don't have mouths, though. I've probably got a data file somewhere around here that explains that.-

-I'm not just going to leave you to your little delusions!-

-Being the most advanced weapon in history doesn't make you perfect.-

-Because you're not me.-

-Nyah right back.-

Void, I miss the days he didn't have a mouth.

-Nothing. I was getting to the part where you were outsmarted by a Grineer.-

There was a secret Doan wished she hadn't figured out, as well, something she'd noticed over the past few days going over casualty records. Each day, Grineer casualties went down and Tenno casualties went up. Except for the Grineer who died when the Void portals exploded, the numbers were always dropping.

That meant something was distracting the Tenno or making them weaker.

It took Doan two days to figure that out and she'd needed another day of bed rest after the ordeal but, to be fair, no other Grineer ever caught on. Now she had a way to stop the Tenno.

And she wasn't very happy about it.

"This way," she said, pointing at the trail of bodies leading towards the portal room.

"How do you know?" asked Scorpion Leeh.

"There are bodies everywhere," Doan explained patiently, "and the portal room is this way."

Leeh stared at her blankly. They ran together in silence for a few seconds before the Scorpion trooper asked, "why won't you answer?"

Doan opened her mouth to say something, but Ind came up beside them both and shouted, "Tenno!" Then she raced past the both of them with a long, singsong cry of, "scuuuuum!"

"Oh," Leeh said, and picked up speed to follow. Her little legs pumped twice as fast as Ind's but, she started slowly catching up.

Inevitably, the entire squad was caught up in the excitement and sprinted most of the way to the portal room, finding fresher and fresher corpses all the while.

I trust I don't have to remind anyone of the self-destruct systems in almost all armour system designs in the Origin System and how bad a sign it was that most hadn't gone off yet.

A single hall before the portal room, Doan Tana bellowed, "STOP!"

The squad stopped dead, corpses burning up around them, and looked back at her.

"Sarge?" asked Lancer Pag. He leaned towards the door to the portal room, as if being that much closer would make the fighting start sooner.

"Wait," Doan told them all firmly. "No attacking."

It was a prudent strategy. There were, after all, three Tenno beyond the next hall, any one of which could probably kill the entire squad.

-What?-

-Who cares?-

-Alright, if you say so.-

The Grineer were sad. Miserably, disappointedly sad, like children who'd just had candy taken away and their pet kubrow kicked at the same time. It turns out shoulders can droop, even in armour that big, and it's actually a pretty impressive sight. The upper quarter of the Grineer silhouette generally loses ninety percent of its width in the trooper and lancer types, and bombards… well, there weren't any bombards in the squad, but trust me when I say it's a sight to behold.

-Good enough?-

Apparently it is possible to visibly pout inside of Grineer armour, but it's easiest to see in scorpions like Leeh, or butchers, and Leeh had just the face for it, with a swollen lip that practically blocked out her chin.

-...-

One of the troopers managed to find a rock and kicked it in a miniature Grineer tantrum.

-Okay, that's enough, you've had your fun, I'm sure it was very amusing to watch. Can we continue now?-

-Thank you!-

Doan took a step forward, intent on peeking into the room to get a glimpse of the Tenno for herself, when somebody tapped her shoulder. She froze, then turned her head very slowly to see who was trying to catch her attention.

Everyone of her squad looked blankly at her from at least two meters away.

Doan Tana sighed. Then she promptly turned around, barked, "stay," at her squad, and walked back into the Orokin tower to the nearest corner.

As soon as she was out of sight of her squad, a smoky-grey Tenno with a horned head and silver filigree along his limbs appeared, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed.

Doan ground her teeth. "Secret," she said politely. Ground her teeth because this complicated things, spoke politely because, well, Tenno.

It wasn't that she wasn't happy to see him. In spite of… ahem… certain complications involved in Doan reaching her current rank, and even in spite of the fact that Doan was good at being angry, she found that it was hard when Secret was around.

He gave a jaunty wave and she smiled, but it quickly downgraded itself into a grimace.

"You're stealing our stuff," she told him.

Secret spread his hands wide, then pointed at Doan, made a grasping motion that he pulled towards himself, and tapped himself twice on the chest with his thumb. All with an indignant sort of tone.

"You don't scare me," Doan lied. Then she asked, hesitantly, "what are you going to do?"

A knife the size of Doan's forearm appeared in Secret's hand and he raised his other hand in away that looked familiar to the Grineer.

It looked like the motion Secret made when he became invisible.

"Wait!"

Secret dropped his hand and looked at Doan.

She hadn't actually expected that to work. But Secret stood there, waiting, with his head tilted so one of his horns tapped his shoulder.

Doan thought fast.

"You can't kill them."

Well, fast for a Grineer. I assure you she was simply unclear of exactly how Tenno operate.

Secret nodded slowly, sheathed his dagger, and unholstered an ornate pistol. He tilted his head again.

Doan realized her mistake very quickly.

"No! I mean…" she trailed off.

This wasn't exactly the sort of situation she was trained for, and her conditioning wasn't helping. She was smart enough to know that there was nothing she could do to kill Secret, but the Queens placed less priority on individual Grineer lives. Doan Tana is an excellent leader, a good person, but her priorities tend to lie towards saving individual Grineer lives, at least where her squad is concerned. On this, I imagine both the Queens and I are confused. They aren't even particularly good clones, and most of them still die eventually.

-That doesn't make any sense.-

-She can't even carry on a full conversation with any of them.-

-Well, no, but that's because you can't speak. It's not as if you don't understand.-

-Yes, but-

-I-

-Can I-

-Alright! I don't get it, but alright! If I just sum it up as "Doan Tana is a good person with feelings," will that be enough for you?-

-"Who knows how fragile life is and wants what's best for those in her care." For Void's sake, you make her sound like the Lo-

-Nothing. I'm sorry, Secret. I forgot.-

-It's nothing. Nothing at all.-

Doan didn't have many options for convincing Secret to do what she wanted, so she she took the only option she had. She told the truth.

"I'm planning to kill your team. I know how to do it. They will be weak after they steal our key. We will ambush them… I don't want to."

Secret froze, went nearly as still as the very walls of the Orokin tower itself.

Doan kept talking. "I would kill you, too, but I'm alone. Whenever we meet, I have to think up reasons I can't kill you, or I would try." She grimaced. "I am very good at thinking up reasons."

Secret raised his gun, then started to lower it again, and just froze, gun pointed at Doan's hit but not aimed in any way.

Doan nodded. "You could kill me. Even if I grabbed you first, I need my squad to keep you- keep you dead." She choked out the last few words, remembering how Secret had looked, broken and propped up against a wall on an Infested ship.

"I don't want to die," she said. "I don't want my squad to die. I don't want you to die. But I know a way to kill your team. I have to kill them."

Secret stood, watching Doan, for several seconds. Then he reached out and tapped her helmet's forehead. Then he stepped back and held up a hand, palm up.

This next part was all my doing, by the way.

An image flashed into being above Secret's hand. It showed a line of moas marching in side by side, a Corpus technician looming over them and ordering them forward. Then the image shifted, the technician changing to an image of Captain Vor and the moas changing into Grineer troops. Doan herself marched in lockstep with the other clones.

Then the Doan in the image raised her head, looked around. She started looking around frantically, then her march halted, stumbled, and for a moment it seemed she would break off from the others.

She didn't. The little Doan in the image regained her footing and returned to lock step, and now her gaze was locked on a shadowy figure at the edge of the image.

Secret watched the holovid with Doan, then looked up at her.

"Yes," she whispered when it was finally over. "That is what it feels like."

The image vanished halfway through a second playthrough. Secret nodded, waved his hand, and disappeared.

Doan looked around, eyes following the direction she suspected Secret was going, but without the usual trail of bodies she couldn't be sure where he was.

"Secret? Don't kill them." She looked for another way to ask, but she hadn't yet learned the word please, so she just said again, "don't kill them!"

"Doan!" Ind yelled.

Doan ran around the corner, but there was nothing there except for her squad, waiting, unsuspecting. Ind was at the front, starting towards Doan.

When Secret attacked, she would be the first to die.

Only Secret didn't attack. He appeared halfway between Doan and her squad, waving his arms wildly.

"Tenno scum!" It was hard to tell how many of the squad yelled the words, but most of them yelled, "get it!"

Bullets filled the air while Doan watched, dumbfounded. Secret barely responded, except to do a little dance, turn, and start running into the tower.

The squad followed at a sprint, yelling all the while, and Doan didn't stop them. She joined them, in fact.

After all, technically her squad had a better chance of defeating Secret than they had of defeating the other three Tenno without knowing where Secret was.

Let us spare the details, which are farcical at best. Let it be said that Doan's squad followed Secret a great distance into the Orokin tower, and then back out towards the entry portal again.

And then, in the portal room itself, Secret disappeared. Not in the way he'd done before, with a wave of the hand and a flicker, but with a sudden, quiet "pop".

The squad milled around in confusion for a moment before Doan yelled, "circle!"

It was a simple command for simple soldiers, and the group formed up with their guns facing in every direction, waiting for the Tenno to show its face.

For a moment, too, Doan was confused. She'd seen Secret disappear like that before. It meant he'd been a decoy, a fake of himself. But now they were in the entry to the Orokin tower. What did that mean? What did Secret want?

A clapping sound echoed through the dead silent tower. Secret walked through the only entrance.

Doan didn't have a choice. She yelled, "fire!"

Secret waved a hand.

There was an almost universal chorus of Grineer swear words that really shouldn't be repeated in public, all grunted and rumbled by Grineer who'd just found out their guns were broken.

Doan threw down her gun. She didn't even draw her sheev. What would be the point?

Besides, Secret was just standing there with his arms crossed. Waiting.

Waiting for-

"Ah, bleep," Doan said as she turned to see three other Tenno coming through the portal.

-I know that's not what she said.-

-As a matter of fact, I'd figured out you were there. Thank you. And no, you don't need to tell me her exact words. You were listening when I mentioned words not for public company, right?-

I swear, sometimes it's like raising a toddler.

So now Doan's squad was in the middle of a room with two exits, both of which were covered by fully-fledged Tenno warriors.

Very good-looking Tenno warriors. Some were lean, some were muscular, all were fine examples of physicality. Even the one Doan was pretty sure wasn't male. It had a beak and its waist just seemed…

Doan Tana gave a very deliberate blink and refocused her thoughts.

Oh, right. They were all going to die.

It was the white, black, and gold one, the tall one with the massive… thighs… that walked straight up to them while the other two circled around. None of them were holding the portal key.

Doan Tana pushed across the circle until she was standing in front of the Rhino Prime. It looked up at her, then around at her squad. Then it leaned to the side to look around her. Doan followed its gaze to see Secret, nodding back. Then she looked back at it.

"Now?" asked Lancer Pag. He was holding a baton. It wasn't even an electrical one.

The Rhino reached out a hand, pushed Doan back with one fingertip, then raised his foot.

That foot came crashing down with enough force to make every physicist in history weep. Doan's entire squad was launched into the air and…

Then they were on the other side of the portal, hitting the ground hard and landing in a metallic heap.

Doan stood up last. For several seconds, she just lay there, stunned. There'd been a blur, she'd sort of felt herself being moved, and then here they were. They were just on the ground in the middle of the Grineer side of the portal chamber, alive.

Ind ambled up to her, whistling, and held out a hand for her to grab. Doan did so, and was pulled to her feet.

There was nobody else around. The portal chamber was empty. There were no Grineer nearby. The Tenno were gone. The portal device was just sitting there, perfectly functional. If they'd wanted to, they could probably have walked back into the tower.

"Tenno," Ind said confidently. "Goodbye."

Which, whatever that was supposed to mean, satisfied Doan.

"Squad," she yelled, taking hold of herself at the same time as her squad turned to her. "Get moving! We report in now!"

The squad tromped off, happy enough to follow Doan's orders and nowhere near smart enough to wonder what was wrong with being suddenly dropped off on the other side of a Void portal after being surrounded by Tenno.


	8. Sorry

**Author's Note:** **So this is your lucky day if you're a Doan Tana fan, but it actually marks a bit of a failure on my part. For the first time since January of 2016, I failed to reach my goal of 9k words every month. This 3k chapter is all I have to show, because of my workload the last two months. The good news for you guys is that that may continue. I tend to consider Doan Tana my least stressful story to write, since it doesn't include massive foreshadowing and can freely skip from event to event over the course of months. We're getting highlights from their lives rather than the play-by-play of some of my stories. This means that, if I've got no other stories available by the time my personal little deadline comes around, I'll put time into this and not have to double-check all my years' worth of notes on character growth and lore.**

 **So, enjoy, and maybe I'll even come out with another next month. -.- But don't get used to it... Doan Tana is a bimonthly story, officially.**

It isn't hard to explain why relays explode when hit with a Fomorian's main cannon. It's like throwing a clump of mud into the air and punching it. Poof. Everything, everywhere, and a muddy fist as a bonus.

The Tenno didn't just muddy the Grineer's fist during the "Eyes of Blight", they bloodied it. Tenno took to their new archwings like they'd been born to fly. They swarmed every fleet. Grineer died in their thousands, ships were torn apart from the inside, Fomorians were turned into miniature suns. The Tenno fought hard with technology they'd only just gotten their hands on.

You called it a failure, that last effort to save the relays from wave upon wave of Grineer metal. Gathering everyone for day after day of flight, losing so many Tenno and so many relays.

You called it a failure, but how many did you save? How many relays withstood those first waves, were evacuated, were empty of innocents by the time the Grineer finally broke through your lines?

Hundreds of thousands are alive today because of those sacrifices and many of them are helping us rebuild. The Grineer didn't win that day. They'll never win. Every victory the Tenno take frees the system, little by little. One day, everyone will be free because of what started when the first Tenno woke.

-What do you think?-

-What do you mean, overdramatic? I'll have you know that would be the third speech given by a Cephalon in all of history!-

-Well, I'm sure they'll like it. Some Tenno actually have taste.-

-Secret… overdramatic or not, I meant it. You know that, right?-

-You're a hero in my history books, brat. And I'm the only one writing any.-

Which brings us to Secret's reaction to the entire battle. Siege. Event. Thing.

Er… never mind that!

More important is Doan Tana's response to Secret's reaction. Because Doan was being followed. And she'd noticed. This was, obviously, unusual, because it wasn't as if any Tenno or his Cephalon had taken an interest in her and made a habit of following her around. Therefore, in the unusual circumstance of Doan Tana being followed around, she managed to notice.

It probably had something to do with the sporadic bouts of dead silence that would surround her. Despite what some people seem to imagine, those are noticeable.

-Yes, but those are average Grineer.-

Which is what led to Doan standing in an isolated room of a base on Rhea, with only Ind for company. Company she was trying to get rid of, obviously.

"Doan needs to be alone, Ind. Make sure the squad doesn't come."

Ind sagged, disappointed, and looked out the window at Saturn. "Watching?" she asked.

"Yes," Doan agreed, latching onto the idea. "Watching. You know how hard it is to watch and listen at the same time, Ind."

Ind, who had been staring out the window, turned and cocked her head in confusion.

"Talking good?" she managed.

"I just want to watch right now," Doan assured her. "Keep the squad away?"

"Me, too?"

"Yes, Ind, you, too."

Ind nodded sadly, took one last look out the window, and left.

Doan started counting. After one minute, she whispered, "Secret?"

Her voice trembled.

He appeared, standing directly in front of her, and Doan squeaked slightly.

-She's going to be livid when she finds out you made me say that.-

-Maybe not, but now she will. Better you than me.-

It wasn't over fear, though it was surprise.

Secret wasn't very secret anymore. Before, he'd been a smokey grey and silver. Now his armour was bright white and gold, his helmet had a crown out of two horns reaching down from the top of his head to his chin.

"By the Queens," Doan gasped. "You're beautiful."

Secret blushed. Warframes cannot blush, but I have it on good authority that he did, anyway. Compliments; he doesn't know how to deal with them. So he stood there, sword in hand, a little dumbfounded for a few seconds.

"Is it special?" Doan asked, looking at the Warframe and then at the sword. "Is it because you're here to kill me?"

It wasn't as if she could stop him. The entire point of meeting him alone like this was to make sure he didn't lose patience and kill her entire squad to get at her.

After all, why else did Tenno follow Grineer around?

-I was as surprised as you. Don't ask me why she thinks that. You were the one… I mean… of course no Tenno had ever followed Doan around before, so we have no idea where she got the idea.-

-We have to find out how Doan keeps getting her hands on these.-

Secret, though, shook his head. Even so, he raised his sword and looked at it, then at Doan, which didn't inspire a lot of confidence.

-Well, stop sending mixed signals, then! You can't talk and you can clear an entire Galleon of Grineer forces in minutes. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence when talking to you alone.-

-Yes, but I'm the ship. I can say whatever I want.-

-Because I'm the ship and you can't walk to Mars.-

Doan instinctively took a step back and Secret raised his hands - which, again, didn't inspire a lot of confidence. It wasn't until he sheathed his sword at his hip that Doan felt a little more calm. She had her Gorgon with her, but that was a joke at this distance. So she did what she could. She talked. She was getting very good at that.

For a Grineer.

"I couldn't warn you," she explained. Then she winced.

Even the thought of having tried to warn Secret hurt. A strong part of her wanted to declare that the destruction of the Relays was exactly what the enemies of the Queens deserved. She didn't need to, though. She convinced herself of that. She thought through the whole thing and acknowledged it would only get her killed, and dead Grineer couldn't serve the Queens.

Secret tilted his head. It wasn't easy, with the ridiculous size of his horns, but he managed.

That was when Ind walked back into the room.

Without going into the details, there was a lot of noise, at least two people almost got shot, and two-thirds of a moment later Ind was being held against a wall by Secret.

"Secret!" Doan cried, horrified at the sword in the Tenno's hand. "That's Ind!"

Ind, however, wasn't cooperating with either of the pair, and was flailing her arms at Secret. Since she was so much larger than him, that meant her hands smacked across his helmet over and over again, knocking it from side to side as his horns caught blow after blow.

He whirled, threw her into Doan, and the two crashed to the ground and Secret landed on top of them, sword to their throats.

-That is not "panicked", that is, "two very dead clones in a second".-

-That's why I told you to record a message. But nooo, you wanted to handle it alone.-

-You're right. I'm sorry. And I understand. I'll just… tell the story, shall I?-

Doan's mind ground to a stop. There wasn't a way out of a situation like this, no way to move fast enough to outmaneuver a Tenno, especially not one so close and without any weapons for themselves.

So, like any sane individual would, she froze.

And, knowing Ind wouldn't, she barked, "Ind, stop."

Ind stopped. The power of the commander voice is a frightening thing.

And Secret didn't kill them.

Instead, he raised his free hand, palm up just like last time they met.

An image appeared there. The details were hard for Doan to make out, they were so small, but the display was clear.

A Balor Fomorian, the pride of the Grineer armadas.

Then the image shifted, looking around at Tenno in their tens and hundreds. All of them in their colourful, armoured glory, all with wings holding them steady in the sky.

"Ooh," Ind oohed appropriately.

Doan nudged her to be quiet. Secret's sword was still at their throats.

Then the image blurred.

That's not quite true. The image was flawless, but it changed so quickly that Doan's eyes couldn't track properly. For minutes, the only thing Doan could make out was the constant, ever-growing image of the Fomorian. With one exception.

For a few long seconds, the video slowed. It turned to the side and centered on another Warframe, this one female, with a finned helmet wreathed in fire that streamed behind it. In the corner of the image was Secret's arm, grey with silver lines along it.

The image streaked red and the Warframe was consumed. The image glowed blinding white for a moment, then the Fomorian beam and Warframe were both gone.

In the hologram, Secret's arm was no longer grey. Now it was blackened and limp.

Doan blinked away the white spots in her eyes as her eyes watered. Her head hurt, it ached and stabbed at her and had nothing to do with how her eyes hurt.

She'd never seen something so terrible. A moment ago, there had been a beautiful Warframe in front of her. Now, it was gone. Forever.

Ind only said, "ow."

As if Secret hadn't cared, the image turned away and continued streaking towards the Fomorian. The Fomorian's defenses and even its main cannon fired over and over again, but Secret was never hit. He reached the hull of the Fomorian, one arm coming forward while the other still hung limp at his side.

The Fomorian's hull filled the image for a second, then it turned again, this time to look where the Fomorian was heading. The Relay.

The Vesper Relay, orbiting Venus.

A beam lanced out, the same way it had when the Tenno was killed, and tore through the Vesper Relay.

The Relay exploded. Like a clump of mud. The image focused on the destruction for long seconds, then winked out as Secret closed his fist.

Doan had almost forgotten their position while the recording played, but the sword was still there at their throats, still ready to kill them.

"Oh, bad."

Doan looked over at Ind, who was shaking her head.

"Bad, bad," Ind repeated.

Secret looked at her and, slowly, nodded.

Then he looked at Doan.

She tried. She really did. But there wasn't anything she could say. What was she supposed to say, even if she could? She couldn't even think the things that might make Secret feel better. So she just lay there, helpless, unable to think of a way out.

Secret looked into her eyes, but each of them was only a metal mask to the other.

Then the noise of more Grineer filtered down the corridors into the room. Doan recognized the boisterous tones of Lancer Pag.

Secret stood, looked away, and for a moment Doan considered attacking him.

-No, really. She said she thought she'd have a chance.-

-Yeah. She said you're a tiny little Tenno scum and probably couldn't arm-wrestle a Corpus crewman.-

-Of course I'm kidding! Nobody takes on a Warframe in hand-to-hand, even a Loki… but yes, she considered it for a second. She was desperate. She thought you were going to kill her.-

-You two need to talk more often.-

-Oh. Good. You do that. And while you're at it, say hi from me, will you? And maybe ask if there's anything else you should be apologizing for. She'll say no, but we'll probably come across something later.-

-Yes, I'll take us there. Give it a minute, we're already going.-

Secret moved away as the two got up and then disappeared when Scorpion Leeh came around the corner. Behind her were Lancer Enk and Trooper Plond, along with yet more nameless good-for-nothings. Overall, most of the squad.

For those of you noticing a pattern, this made Doan nervous. She now had most of her squad in a cramped room, unawares, with a Warframe.

She had to figure out a way to get them out of there before they were all slaughtered. Maybe yelling "fire!"?

-Speaking of, you weren't planning on killing them, were you?-

-Ah. Maybe don't tell her that when you see her.-

-Aaand we're here.-

-Alright, have fun out there, kid.-

-I said get out, brat.-

Good kid, needs to work on his social skills. Any social skills.

That's what he gets for hanging out with Belyri's brat.

Where was I?

Right. Secret in the observation room with the Grineer squad.

"What's going on here?" asked Lancer Pag, looking around with his gun already drawn. There wasn't a reason for this. Secret's attack had been mostly silent, there hadn't been any yelling, and Lancer Pag had run into the room for no other reason than that he seemed to like running into rooms with his gun ready.

To be perfectly fair, if he behaved like a normal Grineer, he wouldn't have survived so many missions.

As to the lancer's question, Ind answered first. This is easy when one doesn't need the time to come up with a somewhat plausible lie, as Doan was wasting time trying to do.

"Watching boom!" Ind declared, making an exploding motion with her hands.

The Grineer, naturally, took her at her word, and even managed to come to the conclusion that she must have been watching out of the room's only window. Not wanting to miss out, the entire squad hurried to the window to see.

Of course, they saw nothing, but that didn't deter them.

"Booms? Where?"

"Out of the way!"

"I think I see- no, not that, over there!"

And more chaos of the like. None of them even realized the obvious lack of any action outside, all convinced there would be something if they just looked in the right place.

Grineer. Point them at an explosion and let the soup do the rest.

Doan watched the corners of the room. She couldn't say exactly where Secret was, which meant he wasn't moving yet. He was watching, waiting. Any moment, her entire squad could be killed.

So she put a hand on Ind's shoulder, pointed out the window, and said, "help them find the booms."

Ind went to it with a will. She pushed past the troops and started yelling about booms and shiny things, and soon they were all even more riled up and probably happier than they'd been since they were hatched.

Doan looked around the room. All the Grineer were facing the window except for her.

Doan was a clever Grineer. She knew who Secret would be watching, and she beckoned as she left the room, gesturing to come with one hand and holding up a finger to her faceplate with the other.

There is an important detail to note about that Grineer base at that time. It was emptier than usual. Just for a day or two as the Grineer cloning vats caught up, almost a quarter of the base's rooms were empty.

I wouldn't say it in front of him, but you Tenno were… brutal, after the Eyes of Blight. As much as Secret won't admit it, Doan was probably right about that day. She is very lucky to have survived it.

We haven't gotten close to the most dangerous things Miss Tana has done over the last few years, but I can say with confidence that luring an angry Tenno away from her squad was the bravest thing she's done, and she should be proud of it.

Even if she was only rescuing a bunch of birth defects in tin cans.

She stopped down the hall and in another empty room, this one filled with crates of supplies, and waited.

Only seconds later, Secret appeared in front of her.

It wouldn't be accurate to say Doan knew what she had to say. She couldn't. No Grineer could properly think the thing that Secret wanted to hear, not if they comprehended it. Ind is almost blessed in that way. She has no idea what she's saying beyond the word and, at the best of times, what that word applies to.

There. That counts as a compliment. I'm making a second recording for it and now Secret can't ever claim I don't say nice things about Ind.

Doan was stuck, sitting on a crate in a cramped room with a Tenno, unable to say anything at all. Secret stood there, restless.

Doan tried. Let this recording never reach Grineer ears, because I tell you, Doan tried to say what needed to be said. For long seconds the pain in her head grew and she tried to work through thoughts she simply wasn't built to have. It lasted until she pitched forward, pulling her faceplate off and retching onto the floor at Secret's feet.

Secret hasn't mentioned what he thought of that.

What's worse, Doan kept trying, which was good for neither her stomach or the overall aroma of the Galleon, which needed no help in that area. She kept trying until she was on her hands and knees, barely holding her face out of her own filth. Exhausted, and still failing to even think what she wanted.

For a few seconds, she stopped trying, until she could catch her breath. Then she raised her hand, palm up. She stared at the ground and held up one hand as she leaned on her elbow, trying to ask her question.

Secret, bless that man's heart, got it. He held out his hand, opened it, and the recording reappeared.

Doan forced herself to up to her knees, partly with the help of her armour's servomotors, and reached out to take Secret's hand. As the Fomorian cannon blasted an Ember Prime into vapour, she looked him in the eyes.

She couldn't say what she wanted to say, couldn't think the words, couldn't even try. Still, she managed one honest, wordless message as the light blinded her and tears filled her eyes. The only one of its kind any Tenno has received from any Grineer.

With one look, Doan Tana told Secret what he needed to hear.

I'm sorry.


	9. Fashion

**Author's Note:**

 _Sorry about the lack of updates for a while. A new job took me by surprise and I burned through my backlog before I thought about it. Even when I tried to sit down and get this chapter written, it was always going to be late. Now it's almost a month late, and since this is my most popular story, I'm sorry about that._

 _I hope you enjoy this chapter, which is much less serious than the last one and just a little extra long for reasons._

 _Thank you for the support, and any follows or faves that can help me get above the lewd section of Warframe fics would be appreciated. Also advice, opinions, and ideas._

* * *

Doan Tana was in trouble.

It was sort of her own fault. What did she think was going to happen when she came up with a plan to trap a Tenno inside a Grineer vault?

I have it on good authority she didn't think it through. The exact thought process involved an understanding of just how impregnable those vaults become after an infiltrator - Tenno - has already broken in, followed by the conclusion that trapping a Tenno would be a perfect opportunity to see another one.

-She wasn't bored.-

-No, you're very pretty. You're just not a peachy purple Nova with a Pyra syandana.-

-Secret. Secret, come back here. You have better things to be spending your platinum on. No, don't you-

-Yes, it's off. I turned it off. If you still want it at the end of the story, I'll let you get it. Understood?-

 _In any case_ , Doan was running for her life, because the Nova had escaped and decided that Doan was the obvious culprit in her capture.

It took approximately a third of a second for Doan to discover that running directly away from a Nova was suicidal. Besides the obvious problem of bullets, every Nova can create wormholes to travel long distances in literally no time.

Fortunately, those long distances require line of sight. That meant Doan was turning corners, slamming doors closed, and triggering lockdowns every few seconds, all while radioing back to her squad.

"Open Sector 13H! Close 12H! Hurry to 15M, I need backup!"

Which, unfortunately, was too many instructions, too quickly, and left Ind hurriedly relaying commands to the rest of the squad that consisted of, "open, open, open!"

Needless to say, Doan was giving her cybernetics a run for their money.

-Run for… it's a pun. It's funny!-

-Are you going to be like this all day?-

-Fine, then I'll just finish this whole story without any interruptions. It'll be-

-That's just petty.-

-Shush and listen to this.-

Doan barely made it into the hangar in sector 15M faster than the Warframe following her, and the lack of more than a squad of Grineer in the room made the situation perfectly hopeless.

Without any other options, she ran for the nearest transport, yelling, "Tenno scum are coming! Tenno scum are coming!"

A few of the Grineer in the hangar roared battlecries and one dove into the transport, neatly solving the problem of Doan having no idea how to fly the thing. The transport lifted off, Grineer charged towards the direction the Tenno would be coming from, and Doan herself spun the transport's turret to face the oncoming enemy.

Bullets started to fly before the Warframe entered the hangar, and not a single one hit. The doors opened and the Nova wasn't even there anymore. She fell from the air in the center of the hangar, energy rippling outwards and bullets flying. An entire squad of Grineer died in a beautiful little chain reaction, then pellets of antimatter slammed into the transport, blowing holes in its side until Doan was sent scrambling, then thrown from the wreckage.

She landed with typical Grineer grace, flat on her face perhaps twenty meters from the red-hot wreckage of the ship. Luckily, despite her relatively clever nature, Doan's skull is as robust as any Grineer's, and she pushed herself to the side in time to save her own life.

The blade that came down on her only took the two outermost fingers of her right hand. Doan screamed, rolled onto her back, and drew her sheev left-handed as the Nova came at her again.

She was nowhere near fast enough to stop the attack.

There was a resounding clang as the blade hit, very different from the sound Tenno blades usually made when hitting Grineer armour. Definitely more of a "ting" than a "schlick-AAAAAGH!"

So Doan Tana opened her eyes.

I'll just go ahead and say it. Secret was there, sword on sword with the Nova. Doan watched as Secret pushed the other Warframe back, then put away his sword and started gesticulating fiercely.

Obviously he wasn't just waving his arms around, he was in the middle of a conversation, but Doan assured me it looked simultaneously confusing, terrifying, and ridiculous watching Secret wave his arms around at a slightly-shorter Warframe until, with a visible huff, the Nova threw her arms up, walked to the edge of the hangar, and threw herself out into space.

Which, now I think about it, would have been an incredibly dramatic conclusion to the argument if archwings hadn't been rediscovered a month prior.

This left Doan getting back to her feet as Secret loomed over her and both of them staring awkwardly.

"You saved me," Doan said first, for lack of a better way to phrase the question.

Secret nodded, then slowly raised hand, one finger up, and brought the other hand to his chin.

Doan took this to mean that he would only save her once, and almost thought to bring up the first time they'd met before realizing that it might be a bad idea to mention he'd already saved her more than once. He might decide to stop being so generous in the choices to not kill her.

After a few seconds, Secret snapped his fingers, drew out a scanner, and scanned Doan.

Doan stood still, unsure if the snapping fingers had been some sort of warning.

-Of course she wasn't posing. Who poses standing partway up, one arm in front of themselves, and teetering off balance?-

After a few seconds, Secret was done and, with a wave of his hand, he walked towards the hangar entrance and disappeared out into space.

This left Doan in the middle of a room filled with bullet holes, the fizzling remains of Grineer troops, and a transport with one side missing and still steaming from the heat.

Then her squad arrived.

"Doan's alive! Doan's alive!"

Ind, obviously. Everybody else had their guns out and were grumpily scanning the room for the Tenno. Ind, on the other hand, sprinted across the room and gave Doan a very clanky hug.

"Tenno scum?" she asked, far less worried than she should be.

"Gone," Doan answered.

Before she could explain anything, her squad started cheering. By the end of the day, the entire base was talking about how she'd scared off the Tenno scum.

This led to days of celebration during which Doan was the center of attention, which complicated the following matters a little. Luckily, the focus tapered off after several days, which left Doan open for a meeting.

-No, we're not going to address how you got there in time.-

-It's not stalking, it's called an information network.-

-No, I call _that_ part prioritizing. Now hold on while I skip to the main event.-

The meeting was, according to certain biased and inconsequential individuals, considered a kidnapping. The brats who hold that opinion will remain unnamed, and we shall continue on with the understanding that Doan was convinced to take her leave of her squad and the safety of the local Grineer outpost, whereupon she was provided transportation to the nearest orbiter by Secret and Silence.

The orbiter was, of course, mine, and…

-You know that, no matter how loud you speak… or laugh… I can just edit it out, right?-

Doan's first words when she stepped onto the Orbiter were not a good sign.

"Why did you bring me here? Back off or I destroy your ship!"

I, being the experienced Tenno's companion I am, reacted accordingly.

"Why does she still have her Gorgon?! Miss Tana, please don't shoot!"

-Stop laughing. I'll have you know I've reduced the upper limit on the Orbiter's speaker frequency since then.-

And Miss Tana lowered her gun, because she is a reasonable and respectable individual who asks questions before she shoots.

Questions like, "how do you know my name?!"

I answered as best I could, reassuring her that, "I know everything about you, Miss Tana. I've researched your weaponry and tactics, the promotions and accolades you've received, and especially the modifications to your armour design based on your unique biological def- differences."

-I'm editing that out. I don't even know how you can laugh that loudly. Anyway, how was I supposed to know that wouldn't reassure her? It's my job to record complete histor- would you please stop laughing?-

-I'm going to record a bit about how you're a little whiner who… um… does… stupid stuff…-

-I hate you so much right now.-

-I'll practice lying and do it anyway, see if I don't.-

-No… I won't…-

So this reassurance did not reassure Doan, unfortunately. She lost her temper just a little and yelled something about spies and scum in an accent even I could never quite parse. Secret, however…

-I'm not saying it.-

-No. We can stop the story right there and forget about it. Then we'll see-

-You're the worst person ever.-

Secret… saved the day… All it took was raising one hand and looking at Doan's Gorgon and Doan quieted down long enough for me to speak.

"I'm sorry for any rough treatment these brutes might have put you through, Miss Tana. Secret and I-"

Doan looked from my avatar to Secret with a sudden clack of armour.

"Secret?" she asked, and for a moment I thought she hadn't recognized him all this time. "You call him Secret, too?"

I admit that, up until that point, it hadn't occurred to me that it was unusual.

"Of course," I told her. "That's what you named him. Him and Silence."

Silence knocked the bulkhead with her elbow, hard. I sighed.

"Rather, Silence is what Ind Cusd named her."

Silence, brat, nodded in a smugly satisfied way.

"We've-" I cut off as Secret pointed at my avatar in an overly accusative way. "I've recorded thirty-seven attempts on your life, from within the Grineer hierarchy alone. The latest… misunderstanding by a fellow Tenno was what finally prompted… corrective measures."

Doan managed to give me a very good suspicious glare, considering she was still wearing her helmet. "What do you mean?"

"Corrective means-"

She cut me off with a wave of her hand. "Correct is fix. Fix what? How?" She turned to look at both Secret and Silence. " _Why_?"

See? Ind wouldn't have asked that. No soup-for-brains would have asked that. You don't get "why?" from many Grineer besides Tyl Regor, and that man's rattled as a Furbolg hitting atmosphere. Full speed.

Secret and Silence were, obviously, no help. They looked at each other Silence tapped her faceplate, and Secret just shrugged and walked up to stand beside my avatar. Which, in a way, was sort of supportive. Just a fleshy kind of supportive.

-You're welcome a lot.-

"Well, we obviously don't want you killed, Miss Tana, so we have to-"

"Why?"

That struck me silent for a few seconds. Here was the cleverest Grineer I'd yet seen, standing on a Tenno orbiter with one Warframe in front and one behind, interrogating an Orokin Cephalon, with no idea why we didn't want her dead.

Secret shifted uncomfortably and Silence strutted past Doan so that the three of us stood in front of her.

Well, they stood. I manifested my avatar.

-I'm not interrupting. You're interrupting. There are certain differences with digital life that need addressing.-

-Well, look at it this way: Doan was basically standing inside of me when she waved that gun around.-

-Yeah. Exactly.-

Doan gripped her gun tight, not threateningly, but as a sort of militaristic security blanket. It was cramped in the Orbiter, and she was standing beside the sparking, steadily busy Foundry. For just a moment, though, I paused all the noise on the ship so that what I said could be heard properly.

"Because you're Secret's friend, Miss Tana."

Silence pointed to herself.

"And Silence's."

She added a wobbling, noncommittal shake of her hand.

"Sort of," I translated.

Doan said nothing. She looked at each of us in turn, then, without a word, sat down. Secret and Silence traded looks and probably Sendings, then both looked at me, as if I knew what to do with a dumbstruck Grineer.

Doan just sat there, clutching her head, gun held between her legs and chest.

"Miss Tana?" I asked tentatively.

"No," she moaned. "No, no, no…"

Let's be clear here: we didn't know until years later how critical this moment was. Even when we found out about Grineer Indoctrination in more detail than passing mention, we didn't connect it back to this, because we didn't know the true extent of it.

And so Doan Tana sat there on an enemy ship and tried to process words that she couldn't physically think.

She started to crack, she told me. The mind, even a Grineer mind, is only so malleable, and Doan's wasn't ready.

That was the day I… I nearly killed Doan Tana.

Thank the Void for Secret. He saw the danger, even if he didn't know exactly what it was, and reacted with the reflex and impulsiveness of a Tenno. He stepped into the Arsenal, switched Warframes in moments, and hurried to Doan's side.

She didn't respond initially. Not until Secret reached out a hand and put it atop one of Doan's. Then Doan, still holding her head in pain and confusion, looked up.

For just a moment, her shock overrode her other thoughts, and she saw clearly.

"S- Secret?"

Secret nodded, one finger to his faceplate, and used Nyx's powers to force the thoughts troubling Doan to the back of her mind. Still there, still dangerous, but at least temporarily postponed and, hopefully, her choice to deal with as she wished.

-She blames you every time she forgets things now, though.-

-She does. And she even does it with the Grineer. "Oh no, the Tenno made me forget the plan, sir, so I just did what I thought you would do."-

-It's doesn't matter if it sounds convincing, she's lying to Grineer.-

-Yes. And Ind backs her up.-

Doan and Secret knelt there for little longer as Doan caught her breath, which left Silence and myself watching awkwardly. Luckily, Doan gathered herself before I had to resort to talking to Silence.

The Gunner stood stiffly, then visibly relaxed, loosening up and nodding slowly.

"You will help me not get killed?" she asked hesitantly, still shaken.

Secret nodded.

"Good. Then it is Tenno serving Grineer," she concluded, gaining confidence. "Like when we cleansed the Infested ship together."

Secret tilted his head and looked back at me, clearly doubting the wisdom of our actions.

I was a bit more eager to go along, considering how badly things had gone when I'd tried to control them.

"Yes," I agreed quickly. "That's exactly what it's like."

Silence crossed her arms petulantly.

Secret was hesitant, but he agreed, too, nodding once.

Doan tilted her head, then very slowly reached out and touched the horn that came up from above the Nyx frame's forehead and went back along her head.

"Two are better," Doan said with certainty, fingers tracing the path where one of Loki Prime's horns would have been.

Secret nodded with agreement, then stepped into the Arsenal again. There was a flicker of Void energy, and Nyx was replaced with Loki Prime, done in grey and silver.

Then Secret raised his hands and focused. It took almost ten seconds, but he managed something most Tenno don't even bother to try.

A decoy of Doan Tana flashed, faded, and then fully appeared in the room.

Doan leaned in to peer at her doppelganger, then started to walk around it.

It was good work. Though nowhere near the illusion a Mirage might have managed, it had physical substance and Doan was able to touch it.

Once it seemed Doan was done poking and prodding the decoy, it turned and, under Secret's direction, walked into the Arsenal.

This was where I came in. Changing armour can be hard, especially in semi-corporeal Void constructs, but this part was simple.

With barely a thought, I recoloured the decoy. I don't remember the exact colours, but they were ones that Secret had approved.

"What do you think, Miss Tana?" I asked.

Doan looked at the decoy, hesitant to say anything, until I changed the colours again.

"There are as many options as you can think of," I assured her, flashing through a series of palettes. "I imagine it's hard to develop preferences on those drab Grineer vessels, but if you have a request, we should be able to accomodate."

Secret nodded confidently, knocking the back of his fist against Silence's. To say the pair had worked hard finding pigmentations for the occasion would be an injustice. Most Tenno haven't been so active since the Old War.

Doan watched the whole process with uncertaintyuncertainly, but it took a long flurry of colours before she eventually raised a hand - not the one holding her gun - and I stopped showing the variety of pigments we'd tracked down.

"How will colours make me not get killed?" Doan asked.

Secret and Silence shared a look, then both waved their hands, as if warding off the idea.

"Oh, no," I explained, "that wasn't what this part was for. We have armour for you, if you'd like it, but the colour is just… Secret, help me explain."

Secret, of course, crossed his arms and tilted his head at me in disbelief.

-Well, it was your idea. I always look like this. What do I know about "fashion"?-

-More like you just like seeing me squirm.-

At that, I was mostly stuck, so I just said, "it might help let Tenno know not to attack you, I suppose. Besides, since the armour is going to look a little different, anyway, it won't hurt to colour it up."

"Which armour?" Doan asked, looking down at herself.

It was then that I realized the detail I'd left out.

"The armour we made for you," I explained. "Your armour, as soon as you've chosen the colours you'd like."

Doan processed the words in a moment, nodded, and strode up to the figure in the arsenal. She put her gun on her back and started pointing at parts of the armour, naming and changing colours for each part. It took almost an hour. She turned out to be almost as picky as a Tenno. Worse, with her bad eyes, she had to spend several seconds checking each part to be certain she liked it.

I should be grateful. I've heard some of the stories other Cephalons tell. I can't imagine having to coo over this and that colour swap while a Tenno self-consciously changes palettes and syandanas and armours for hours on end.

Finally, Doan stepped back and gave a satisfied nod.

Then, with an imaginary poof, the decoy disappeared.

-I add it in, mentally.-

-Yes, every single time.-

"Enter the Arsenal, Miss Tana, and we can give you your new armour."

And she did. She just stepped in, like it wasn't a problem. Obviously she was thinking that if we'd wanted to kill her, we'd have done it in any given second in the last hour, but it was still impressive.

It is not easy to outfit a Grineer. They're made up of strange bits and bobs that didn't quite "bit" or "bob" properly. Doan was no exception, and even with the scans Secret had taken, there were some quick changes to be made.

When she we'd gotten the armour on, though, and she stepped out of the Arsenal… I was proud. I admit it.

Tenno-built armour, the armour I'd built for Doan, wasn't the same as what she'd had before. It looked like it, at least in shape, but on the inside it was better in every way. Fit for a friend of a Tenno.

Doan looked down at herself in disbelief, then up at the two Warframes standing in front of her. Secret and Silence shared another look and probably a prolonged Sending, then Secret stepped forward with the finishing touch in his hands.

It's impossible to pretend he didn't seem a bit silly, walking up to the towering Grineer Gunner with a golden scarf in his hands. It was a soft thing in a room of the most dangerous people in the system. Doan looked down at him, at the piece of cloth, and without a word she let him put it on her.

Gold settled against the blue and crimson Doan had chosen and completed it. It was a lucky guess, but it looked like he'd planned it all along.

"The fibers are thin," I informed her as she reached up to touch it, "but they only seem delicate. They'll flow around most blades and absorb laser fire."

She ran her hand through it a few times, then met Secret's gaze.

Secret reached up and put a single finger against Doan's faceplate. He held it there for a moment, until Doan reached up and copied the motion, one finger against Secret's faceplate. They held that way for a second, then Doan stepped back.

"Nobody would believe me, anyway," Doan muttered.

Secret nodded his agreement and started to turn towards the flight area. Then he stopped and turned to my avatar.

"We shouldn't," I told him.

He crossed his arms and so did Silence.

"This was supposed to be a quick thing, to take advantage of change blindness. We're going to run into problems with object permanence if we…"

I trailed off. It wasn't exactly that the brats had changed their stances, exactly, but apparently there are different levels of arm-crossed pouting. Don't ask me, I don't have a body.

-You were absolutely pouting.-

-Legitimate negotiating stratagem? Ha! Right, and I'm a handheld.-

Well, it doesn't matter. It worked. I caved. What can I say? They're cute, even in the murder-suits.

"Miss Tana," I asked hesitantly. Silence urged me on. I gathered my wits and contin-

-Yes, wits. Plural.-

...gathered my wits, and continued, "if you would like, you are free to stay, for just a day or two. It…"

Secret mimed a handshake behind Doan's back. Silence did an over-the-top impression of a Grineer being impressed.

"...It might be a good opportunity… for the next time the Grineer ask… let the Tenno help them."

Doan looked up at my avatar, then at Secret and Silence, and made a sound like the Solstice Celebration had come three times this year. She managed to refrain from hopping up and down, though the force of her nodding did clank her helmet against her armour a few times.

Once she'd calmed down, she said, in a voice of measured enthusiasm, "yes. We should do that."

Secret and Silence fist-bumped again, and I started making preparations for a non-Tenno guest.

For those of you Cephalons who've never had one: don't.


	10. Sleepover

_Author's Note: Here it is, the next chapter. a day late and feeling like a dollar short, but even with two months to prepare, sometimes it feels like I've got no time to write half of these things. But Doan Tana actually has fans (thank you, btw, even if I don't understand), so this is for you, and it'll always be here._

* * *

"Are you all ready?"

Secret nodded and gave the ship in general a thumbs-up.

"Ammunition?"

Doan patted the ammunition pouches on her hips while Secret flicked his fingers and pulled an ammunition packet from his Void pocket.

"Food?"

Secret looked to Doan, who nodded and patted the little pack on her back that held three days' worth of food in horrid Grineer rations. If we'd had anything better, we might have provided it, but food is scarce on Tenno ships. For obvious reasons.

-Yes, and you don't rub it in at all, do you? Maybe someday I'll get a body with a mouth and be able to taste food, too. Then you'll see!-

-That's just mean. At least eat with your mouth closed. The crunching is going to show up on the recording.-

"Armour check?"

At this, Secret crossed his arms impatiently. We'd just finished checking Doan's armour and Secret was, well, set for life.

Doan nodded uncertainly and looked down at the atmospheric station outside the Landing Craft's window. "I think we are ready," she said, hefting her Gorgon. "Er… how do we get out?"

I let Secret beckon Doan over to the center of what was, admittedly, a very small room. He had to put out his hand so she would stand back, but then I simply slid open the panel and Secret lay down in the… the… what do we call the thing that rotates and drops Tenno out of the Landing Craft?

-No, I know it doesn't have a name, I'm asking for suggestions.-

-Er…-

-No, no, it's a wonderful name. It's just, well, have you run it by any of the other Tenno yet? Maybe it's not fair to name it ourselves without any input. Don't you think?-

-I am not doing "that thing". I just think we shouldn't be inconsiderate.-

-I'm always considerate! Now shush, I'm telling a story.-

Once Secret had left, Miss Tana leaned over the Warframe-sized indent in the floor and looked meaningfully up at my avatar. Well, meaningful for somebody with a helmet on.

"Can I just use the back?" she asked, pointing at the part of the ship that usually opened up to attach to the Orbiter.

I took a second look at Secret's method of egress, then at Doan. She was, I admitted, a bit tall for that way out.

"Er," said a younger and less worldly me, thoroughly baffled. "I don't really know. Nobody ever has, without the Orbiter. I'm not even sure I can open it without the attachment."

"Could you try?"

I could, and I did. It took some fiddling and I had to rewrite a bit of code, but I opened the back door of the Landing Craft and Doan simply walked out the back. At the back of the ramp, she stopped for a moment and turned around. She didn't seem certain of what she was supposed to say, because she just waved her hand once, then stepped off the ramp.

Doan landed safely, but not gracefully. She hit a walkway of the Corpus station with a clang that should have carried through the entire facility, and would have if it hadn't been for the company waiting for her.

Doan stood up, said hello to Secret, looked around, and saw Silence and Ind Cusd standing there, with Ind looking much less confused than she really should have.

Ind waved enthusiastically, as if Doan hadn't noticed her.

Herein the contrast between the two should be noted, especially the fact that Miss Tana tends to think things through… at all… because she asked, "what are you doing here?"

-You can't honestly defend that. Ind's explanation was, "Tenno scum."-

-Does that seem like an explanation to you?-

-And would you have expected Ind to explain any better than that?-

-I rest my case.-

So Ind's explanation was a chipper declaration of, "Tenno scum." Silence nodded along as if that explained everything.

-No, it doesn't explain everything. It doesn't explain anything at all.-

-You're not as unpredictable as you think you are.-

-Oh, look, an Orokin tech shipment on Europa!-

-Yes, I'm messing with you.-

Doan wasn't going to get a better explanation and she knew it. The Tenno were mute and Ind had just used up the vast scope of her storytelling abilities. The only thing left to do was follow along with whatever Secret had brought them along for. Which Doan did, for all of twenty meters and one room, until they saw a Corpus patrol.

Given the common emotional reaction to meeting members of the credit cult, it's not surprising that Doan raised her gun and shouted, "attack!"

Tried to shout. Her voice came out so quiet that she barely heard it and couldn't make out the words, and Silence reached out and kept her from properly raising her gun, as well.

Silence quirked her head forward and to the right just a few degrees, then raised her other hand and knocked on the wall.

No sound came out.

Ind started knocking on the wall, too, but Secret led the group forward and Doan grabbed her fellow Grineer's hand to bring her along. The four did a Tenno-and-two-heavy-gunners approximation of creeping forward and around the patrol, which was certainly only possible because of the combination of Silence and Corpus helmets.

They have slit visors. Who thought that was a good idea? Even the Grineer have proper eyeholes. And have you ever seen a Corpus look up? It's not possible! The-

-Right. Sorry.-

The group walked around the Corpus patrol, pausing only long enough for Silence to put an arrow through a camera lens.

The space station was cramped. It's true that some Corpus soldiers are just as tall as Grineer, but where Grineer care for tactical mobility, Corpus prioritize saving credits. That means low ceilings in corridors, efficiently smooth doors, lots of cameras to prevent theft. Only one of those is conducive to convenient sneaking.

It's not the corridors.

Doan and Ind ducked through a doorway, not because they would have hit their heads, but because the door was precisely the height that they wouldn't quite do so and that feels uncomfortable. In the next room, there was another patrol, but this time Secret raised his hand and pointed, nodding to the two Gunners' guns. With a wave of his hand, he disappeared, then Silence stepped forward and raised three fingers.

"They want us to shoot," Doan explained to Ind. Then, "not yet! Wait."

Ind pouted, but waited.

Two fingers.

"When I say," Doan said. Then she stopped to realize that she could hear herself.

Silence looked back and did that head quirk thing again. Then she turned back and gestured with her hand.

One finger.

Doan waited a beat, then ordered, "now, Ind!"

Secret appeared in front of the Corpus patrol, which had just enough time to cry out and raise their guns before a torrent of bullets slammed into them. Shields and then bodies and mechanical parts were shredded in little more than a second and the only return fire hit a Secret that faded away moments later

Secret reappeared moments later to offer a raised hand to Silence, who smacked it, then added a fist bump. Both looked at Doan and Ind, nodding approvingly.

"Don't Tenno-" Doan cut off as her voice went from near-silent to full-time volume as abruptly as Nef Anyo's bank account empties in the Index. Then she shook her head and continued, "don't Tenno kill a hundred times that number every hour? Each?"

Ind nodded. "Lots," she said, then pointed at the bodies that were quickly self-destructing. "Not lots."

It occurs to me that this is both some of the strongest math skills either Grineer has ever produced on short notice and evidence that Doan had been getting up to learning much more about the Tenno than Grineer propagandists preferred their soldiers had access to.

And to that, Secret's reply was a gesture towards himself and a shrug, then pointing at Doan and waving a hand to the now-dust Corpus bodies. He finished with a nod of approval.

Doan and Ind exchanged a look and Doan asked, "good work?"

The Tenno gave nods of confirmation, then turned and ran ahead while the Grineer hurried after, with Doan yelling into the quiet, "where are we going?"

The same thing happened with two more patrols before one annoying osprey finally noticed them too soon to surprise, at which point the whole thing turned into a firefight. The alarms went off and Secret hacked them and… well, you know how that goes. Everything about Tenno and Corpus fighting over computer systems is just proof that they should let Cephalons come on missions.

-I'd be a brilliant hacker. And yet you prefer stopping every thirty seconds to shut off the security.-

-I'm not jealous! I just don't see why you get to send Grineer ships into the sun and I don't.-

While the fighting was going on, something very noticeable and decidedly lacking in subtlety was happening: the Tenno were leaving certain Corpus for the brief and probably inglorious seconds until Doan or Ind noticed and turned their Gorgons on the survivors.

Gorgons do bad things to Corpus. It's like the bullets were designed specifically for - hold on, let me check my notes…

Yes. Gorgon ammunition was designed specifically for dealing with shielded enemies.

-Oh, sure, it's obvious to you. Where's your cited research sources, then? First-hand historical accounts?-

-Shooting Corpus does not count as evidence of a weapon's design origins!-

Every time the group finished off another squad of Corpus, the Tenno would nod and beckon the Grineer on. They spent minutes hurrying deeper and deeper into the station until Doan gave up on asking the mute Warframes why they were here and settled for talking to Ind. Who was, at the moment, poking at Doan's wrist. She didn't actually ask anything, but she poked curiously, seemingly expecting the enlarged piece of armour to do something.

"No, Ind," Doan warned her friend. "That's mine."

Ind nodded and stopped, taking a step back and looking at Doan's armour. She didn't actually say anything for a while, and the Tenno opened the next doorway and started gesturing for the Grineer to follow before Ind said, "good."

There was a word she was searching for, claims Silence, but it was almost a year before the dunce- before Ind learned it. In case it doesn't come up in a later recording, the word Silence taught her was, "pretty." Grineer don't learn that word.

Looking at their ships, it's not surprising.

The next room was larger and Secret and Silence both entered it cautiously, hands raised to slow Doan and Ind.

A voice called out to them from across the room, a Corpus sergeant in one of the biggest exoskeletons their people give out and more than forty of the sergeant's goons and bots.

The room went quiet, though the Sergeant still shouted and his machines still moved to form up around him. Secret appeared beside himself. Doan and Ind raised their guns.

Then the lights flickered.

Secret and Silence looked at each other. They looked at Doan and Ind.

Flickered again.

The two tenno started gesturing quickly at each other and the Grineer, like they were having a silent yelling match. Worse, it looked to Doan like they were panicking.

The lights flickered once more. The doors of the room slammed shut in the darkness and the lights came back on, dimmer than before.

What happened next made it very clear just how much the Tenno had been holding back. Secret swept his hands down in the familiar gesture of breaking most weapons in the area, then a wave of energy blasted from Silence, knocking down the squads. Both Tenno raised their weapons on the helpless Corpus.

In another second, they were all dead, and a sound filled the room. Doan would never have recognized it, but it was the sound of ancient Orokin coming from a throat that was never meant to speak. It wasn't loud, but it was somehow everywhere, hissing-

-Alright, I'll stop.-

-I can mimic the effect, you know.-

-Sorry.-

The shadows coalesced in the room, thickening and shifting as Silence and Secret gathered Doan and Ind together and stood on either side of them, defending them.

"Bad," Ind said, peering into the dark. "Bad, bad."

Doan agreed wholeheartedly. The air was hissing and Doan's eyes couldn't pierce the darkness.

Secret's decoy began to struggle as if it were a living thing, pushing at the shadows that ate at it like acid until there was nothing left.

Then there was the sound. The mission up until then had been muted or silent, but now Doan could hear the creak of her armour, the whirr of her cybernetics, the too-loud sounds of her breath and heartbeat. And the hissing, mockery-of-melody tones of a voice that Doan didn't understand.

-Are you sure you won't tell me what he said? Even for the record?-

-I understand. I'll… turn the lights up a bit brighter, shall I?-

Doan's shoulder clinked against Ind's as the pair edged closer together behind their Tenno protectors.

Then the shadows shifted and something lashed out of them, hitting Secret hard enough to knock him back and disappearing again. Silence whirled and loosed an arrow on the into the darkness, but it hit nothing. Then she waved her hand and suddenly, Doan knew what was out there as if she could see. It was a Tenno, she realized, one that was hunting them, either the Grineer or Tenno.

Then the shadow started eating at the sound as well. It wasn't an easy thing to describe, according to Doan, but her idea of where her target was began to waver and fade.

The others wasted no time. Rifle, machine gun, and bow were raised and fired into the darkness. Sounds of metal on metal rang out, bullets deflecting from a Tenno blade, but a few shots resulted in the sizzling zap of a shield impact.

It wasn't enough and Doan knew it. This was a Tenno, a monster one that was disrupting Secret and Silence's abilities. She had a bit of cleverness to her and had heard the stories of Tenno who could walk through an artillery barrage without concern; neither of her squadmates here were those kind. Without their powers, they had very little. Still, they were Tenno, with Tenno weapons and Tenno skills.

She lowered her Gorgon, raised the right arm of her new armour, and took her aim. Silence's sonar was almost gone, but a wasted shot would mean no chance at all.

"Ready!" Ind shouted, though she couldn't have had any idea what Doan was up to.

Then Doan Tana fired her grappling hook. She held her breath as it flew and an arrow took Silence in the head, lodging in the fanning headpiece of her helmet.

There was the thunk of contact and Doan pulled with all her considerable and augmented might, dragging the Tenno out of the shadows as Ind filled the area with bullets.

Then the rope went slack and Doan overbalanced, pitching forward as a shape came close enough to see. Humanoid, outlined with seething red lines, and carrying a massive scythe. Not that Doan knew or cares what the weapon was called at the time. She almost didn't get time to ever ask the question, as the Stalker sped towards her and swung for her throat.

All she could do was fall.

Then the world twisted and she hit the ground, looking up as Secret stood in Doan's place and took the Stalker's attack on his blade.

There is no question that Secret is good at what he does. He is a swordsman like any Tenno, but back then he was out of practice; the long sleep had dulled him while Stalker had fought for time longer than even I have been around. Had Secret been able to use his powers, he certainly could have held Stalker off long enough to escape. Without them…

-But it was not a fair fight. Remember that.-

It was Ind who moved fastest, though only because she was already shooting. She turned her gun on the Stalker and his shields flashed for a moment before he disappeared and reappeared behind Secret. This time it was Silence who attacked, throwing a blast of sound. The darkness ate at the sound, but the force of it still made the Stalker stumble and have Secret enough time to turn and block the next strike.

There was another flurry of blows so quick that Ind stood no chance of picking a target and even Silence hesitated to take her shot. Instead, she drew her staff and, in one of the most reckless acts in a long, long list of reckless acts, she joined in the melee.

The pair of Tenno held him off, but not unscathed. One of Secret's horns was shorn clean off and Silence took a gash in the shoulder so deep that every block on her right side tore it wider.

Doan didn't get up. The fight had started barely a meter away from her and had passed above her head seven times since it started.

Secret's leg took a gash wide enough to put a hand into and Ind stared at Doan helplessly.

Doan drew her standard-issue sheev and activated it and her radio.

"Ind," she said just loud enough to hear herself over the ringing of swords, "when I say shoot, shoot."

Ind nodded vigorously, which was enough for Doan. As subtly as she could, the squad leader readied herself.

When the Stalker moved close enough, she shouted, "shoot!"

Ind opened fire. Neither Secret nor Silence had any shields left, and their armour cracked and they were thrown off balance as some of the stray shots hit them. The barrage, therefore, had two effects: it shredded the Stalker's shields and put him in a perfect position to finish at least one Tenno.

If Doan had not been ready, if she hadn't moved faster…

Well, she thought he could revive if things went wrong.

We can only be grateful for the discovery of the Reservoir. But that's another story.

It doesn't matter. She was fast enough and that… that isn't an issue anymore. Not for most Tenno. So when she grabbed Stalker by the leg and stabbed her sheev into his knee, when his shields broke and he went stumbled, even for a split second, that was all that was needed.

Gorgon rounds slammed into Stalker hard enough to push him deeper into Doan's vice grip and Silence took the chance to stab him in the ribs with one of her arrows. His response was to backhand her hard enough to snap the weakened portion of her helmet off, then swing his scythe down into Doan's chest.

I take credit for this part. I'm the hero. Secret helped.

-Yes, but you only slowed the blade. It still hit her.-

-And saving her the first time was very heroic, but the second time was my armour that did it.-

-You scanned it, I built it. It's mine. Miss Tana's. Whatever.-

Well, the scythe came down and Secret took a swipe to try to stop it, but he wasn't exactly close enough to really block it, so it came down anyway, just a little slower and off-target. Which meant that, when it hit, it wasn't lethal. It just hurt. A lot.

Miss Tana, sporting a very new but mostly sort of shallow hole in the right side of her chest, decided that letting go of the person who'd done it was necessary. Or her arms decided it, at least. She's informed me in… graphic… terms that she would have held on quite a bit tighter if she could have.

I think it was a good thing she let go. As much damage as they'd done, the Stalker is crafty, vicious, and a more experienced fighter than any single Tenno, but he knows his limits and knows when he is in danger. He escaped, vanished into the darkness, but if he hadn't, there is no guarantee any of them would have survived.

The mission was over at that point. With the Stalker teleported away and the darkness fading, Doan got some medical treatment from the Tenno, then Secret had me call in a different cell to clean up.

Considering the experience most non-Tenno have the first time they meet the Stalker, I am grateful the four of them - yes, even Ind - encountered him together.


	11. Foiled!

Doan Tana checked over her shoulder as she entered the room, then hurried to the clunky brown main console on the opposite side. With a quick scan, she found the button she needed. Her hand went to it. Then she hesitated.

This was going to cause problems. Maybe more than it solved.

"Doan!" cried Ind.

Doan flinched and hit the button, then froze.

Ind, of course, wandered past steaming pipes and a massive window holding out endless oceans to stand happily beside Doan.

They both stood there in silence for a few seconds.

Nothing happened.

Doan breathed a sigh of relief and rounded on Ind.

"Ind! Where's Tyl?" she demanded, looking behind Ind as if the man would appear.

Ind pointed behind herself and said, "talking, talking." She raised one hand and mimicked a mouth yammering endlessly.

"I said to keep an eye on him!" Doan said, taking Ind's hand and pulling her out of the room.

"Pag in charge," Ind reassured her in a way that was anything but reassuring.

She stopped at the door and looked back.

The window was not leaking. The pipes were not glowing with imminent and death-bringing explosions.

Button pushed, underwater base saved.

Tenno probably annoyed.

Doan turned and hurried

I can confirm that a few Tenno were unhappy. Doan had already spotted another trap a week earlier and Ind had stumbled across-

-Stumbled across, yes.-

-Are you going to tell me Ind Cusd purposefully activated a localized lockdown on two sniper accesses while a Tenno assassin was moving into position?-

-You've been spending too much time in the Void.-

Either way, Doan Tana was pretty certain that she'd saved Tyl Regor's life one too many times not to be noticed.

For those listening, I'm going to make a plain warning: Everybody. Involved in what happened. Was an idiot.

Ind, obviously. Doan's squad, largely by habit. Tyl Reg-

-I'm not finished.-

Tyl Regor. The various Tenno assassins. Secret. Especially Secret. And Doan.

-Yes, I said it. Don't act surprised. Even Miss Tana could have spent more time weighing her options. She had ages. Instead, she chose to be an idiot.-

Doan and Ind rejoined their squad, and it was quickly obvious that Tyl Regor had been talking since they'd left.

Leeh turned and waved at them, the kind of wave that said, "please save us from the man saying all the big words."

He was asking the wrong person. Doan Tana adored Tyl Regor. She thought his ideas were thrilling even if she didn't understand anything about how they worked. To her, he was a sign that the Grineer could be something more than they were, not his tubemen, but discoverers like Tyl himself.

It's actually a little tiring hearing her go on about it. Miss Tana's heart is in the right place, figuratively speaking, but she has terrible taste.

So she took up a position with her squad and listened for another hour until, inevitably, the Tenno cell assigned to end the tubemen project realized something had gone wrong.

Presumably, the fact that the base hadn't collapsed in on itself in a spectacular high-pressure implosion was their first clue. How many clues they needed after that, I leave for the imagination.

-They tried to kill Miss Tana. _After_ we gave her the new armour! I'm entitled to hold a grudge.-

-And I appreciate the vicarious catharsis, but there's only so much watching another person fighting can do.-

So the Tenno made their next move, which was heralded by an attention-grabbing twinkling in the shadows near Doan.

This is the next part in a situation created by idiots. You see, the twinkling was Secret, who had spent the last four days… you know what? Let me describe it to you. I'm sure you'll get the idea.

Doan noticed the flicker of light, gave a quick order for Ind to take charge again - because that hadn't just proven itself a bad idea - and headed off into the dark.

She assures me she knew it was Secret, but there were Tenno assassins in the area who were quickly developing a grudge against her. It was a demonstration of survival instincts equal to a horny kuaka.

When she reached the spot Secret was waiting at, he shimmered into visibility and beckoned for her to follow. She did, which was fine, only he led her down a hallway and stopped to point out a window. Through the water on the far side of the base was a Tenno cell placing bombs on another window.

I would like to remind listeners that this put a Grineer Heavy Gunner in all her height and technicolour glory standing in full view when one of those Tenno, a Mag, did a little twirl of her Archwing.

Doan stared at the Tenno. The Tenno stared at her. Secret reactivated his invisibility.

In part, Doan was busy being enthralled by her first real sight of Tenno in Archwings. Partly, though, she was just trying to figure out what they thought they were doing, since bases on Uranus have plenty of submersible entrances that wouldn't cause the chaos of flooding an entire section to get in. It took until she started thinking about which room the window as attached to that that finally clicked.

"Lock down Lab Seven," Doan ordered once she realized. At the sound of audible hesitation from the security crew, she added, "that is an order."

The window the Tenno cell were rigging up suddenly had two layers of ferrite slam closed on it. Two of the Tenno jerked back from it and the one who'd already seen Doan started swimming towards her.

This was the moment Doan decided the best place to be would be back with her squad. She gave Secret a very hurried goodbye and then ran back, slowing only when she came back in sight of Ind and Tyl Regor. All of which would have been prudent and intelligent, if she'd then informed her squad of what happened.

She did not. Instead, she calmly rejoined her squad, then called security, this time to tell them to increase underwater patrols surrounding the base.

The squad and Tyl Regor reached the entrance to Lab Seven just as Doan came up beside the scientist.

"My lab, my research, my tubemen!" Tyl ranted, slamming a fist into the door. "Almost ready, imminent! Why is this lab closed?"

He rounded on Doan, who remained remarkably calm as she said, technically truthfully, "there is a high risk of the lab flooding. I will call drudges to move everything to a safer location."

Tyl growled, then shook his head. "Should have known," he muttered, "should have guessed. No matter. Other labs, come along."

-No, I'm not going to "do the voice." Do you really think, if I could, that I would sound like this all the time?-

-Well, I figuratively walked into that one, I suppose.-

Doan passed the duty of organizing the lab relocation on to Erik, who was at least smart enough to pass the responsibility and thinking on to the base administrators. Then the squad followed Tyl Regor to whichever was the next lab he felt like working in.

They made it two minutes before Doan noticed the next problem.

Maybe that's poor phrasing.

She was shot in the head.

This was both a better and worse thing for her than for most Grineer. Better, because she had a helmet capable of keeping her head from being rendered as hollow as most other Grineer's. Worse, because she was still alive for what I've been assured was a truly incredible headache afterwards.

She hit the ground, not of her own volition, and her squad did Grineer things.

"Doan!" Ind yelled, going to her knees to help her friend up. "No! Bad! Bad Tenno scum!"

Somebody in the squad must have yelled, "combat formation bravo!" because the entire squad started shooting at once.

"Tenno?" Tyl Regor hissed. "Little tin men, skittering, scuttling, _slithering_ through my labs!"

The entire squad of Grineer would obviously have died right then if Secret hadn't done something _even more idiotic_ than trying to fight an oncoming cell of Tenno in the open.

He jumped in the middle of the fight. Not into the fight. He didn't start fighting either side or even both sides. He just jumped into the middle of the fight, right in front of the sniper Trinity's Vectis. He had four Tenno trying to shoot past him and a squad of Grineer who didn't care whether they hit him.

Tyl Regor lost his temper and charged the squad, causing even more of a frenzy.

So, in conclusion, this was the situation within two seconds of the fight starting: four Tenno were standing in a corridor advancing on a squad of Grineer at the end of that corridor. Secret was blocking their shots from hitting Doan Tana, but letting everything else through. All five of those were…

… hold on, let me bring up my diagram…

… the Tenno were being shot at by the Grineer squad and charged by Tyl Regor. The Tenno cell wanted to kill all the Grineer but not Secret. Secret planned to protect Doan and Ind, but nobody else. Tyl Regor considered his fellow Grineer expendable but wanted to protect his labs.

-Did I forget anyone?-

And Ind just wanted Doan to be safe.

Therefore, the next events make perfect sense despite being utterly baffling, oxymoronic as that statement is.

Doan tried to stand, stumbled, and was pulled backwards by Ind towards the laboratory doorway. Scorpion Leeh hit the Mag with a grappling hook and dragged her in. The squad, by some miracle of Miss Tana's training, formed up around Leeh and created a screen for Doan and Ind. That didn't stop one of them from getting killed in the next two seconds, but it was still relatively good tactics.

-I give credit where it's due.-

Secret managed to disarm the Trinity. Since he couldn't use his abilities on friendly targets, he had to do it physically, but he assures me he didn't touch the Trinity's weapons, which I think should be obvious. He's not a barbarian, after all.

-I don't need a full explanation of how. Do wrists even bend that way?-

-No, no, that's the point. I got it as soon as I said it. Thank you.-

After disarming the Trinity, they both got hit by Tyl Regor. Because that's what happens when you turn your back on a mad Grineer scientist with hands the size of a wall. They both ended up on the ground and another Grineer squad member died while Secret was busy hitting the floor. Nobody cares except Doan, of course, but I thought I'd mention that detail.

At least he swap-teleported with the cell's Rhino before Tyl's hands came down. If there was anybody stuck being pummeled into the floor, Rhino and Trinity were probably the best combination.

This also put Secret right beside Excalibur, which… look, Secret's an idiot. I think this proves that. Fighting an Excalibur in close quarters like that, it's a good thing he used his invisibility. And that the Excalibur didn't want to hurt him. And that the two of them spent the entire time arguing more than fighting.

So while all that was happening, Ind managed to get Doan behind the door to the laboratory. She didn't shut it, because that would have been sensible, but at least they were a room away from the Tenno and Doan was starting to stand on her own.

Mag finally got her act together and shielded herself from the Grineer surrounding her. The Rhino grabbed Regor's hands and tossed him nearly across the room. As Regor landed, Mag threw up her hands and lifted all the Grineer into the air.

That likely would have been the end of the whole thing, if the Tenno cell hadn't chosen that moment to start bickering.

Right then.

From what I've gathered - and trust me when I say nobody was paying attention and the three who were have declined to comment - the Trinity raised some sort of objection, the Mag paused with Doan's squad in the air, and the three of them gathered together to talk. Tyl Regor was struggling to get back to the ground, but that wasn't doing much. The Grineer squad just sort of floated aimlessly. A few even enjoyed the experience, to my understanding.

After a few seconds of talk, the Mag pulled Tyl Regor over and the Trinity made a few gestures that likely had to do with capturing the Grineer scientist.

Secret's fight with Excalibur slowed and he stopped to look at the Tenno at the same time as Doan stumbled her way out of the laboratory.

"Tenno!" she yelled, pulling their attention from their discussion.

The Rhino casually raised his pistol and tried to shoot her. Likely would have managed it, too, if Secret hadn't thrown a decoy up in the path of the shot.

Doan kept her nerve, which she really shouldn't have, even with Secret hurrying to stand in her way. There were four Tenno watching her with their guns ready, and she decided to talk.

Secret thinks it's nice that she trusted him so much, but he's not faster than bullets. It also wasn't entirely trust of him that motivated her.

"Leave!" she ordered in her best commander's voice. "I won't let you hurt Tyl Regor."

The Tenno cell all looked at each other, then Mag slammed Tyl Regor into the ground with enough force to make a dent. Tyl grunted and Doan cried out, but Secret didn't do anything.

As if playing with a toy, Mag raised her hand to lift Tyl into the air again and, because he was not a toy and was in fact a massively strong Grineer mad scientist, Tyl grabbed the ground hard enough to make his own dents and swung his hands, catching the Mag in one fist.

That sent the Tenno into a frenzy, including Secret. Rhino slammed into Tyl, but with the Grineer braced for it, Tyl only skidded backwards. Worse, Mag dropped Doan's squad and, with Doan mostly conscious, they started moving with some semblance of sense.

Doan ordered her squad to focus on anybody but "the silver one", then she used her grapple and Leeh's to pull the Trinity towards them. It likely would have worked out well, if Secret hadn't switched places with the Trinity. That left the squad confused, but there wasn't much time to do anything except try to stop Rhino from killing Tyl Regor, Tyl Regor from killing Mag, and Excalibur and Trinity from reorganizing themselves.

Doan grabbed Secret and threw him away towards the two unoccupied Tenno, then everything devolved. Doan tried to get her squad to shoot at the Tenno and save Tyl Regor without killing them, Secret ran interference to protect Doan and the Tenno cell, the cell were mostly in confusion, and everything was a mess.

I won't even describe it. If I could, I'd throw my hands into the air in frustration. Even better, I'd just show Secret's recording of the event.

No, you're not getting the recordings. I'm an oral historian with a transcription function, not a video editor. Just picture an entire room and hallway filled with some of the most advanced beings born and built for war running around like hooligans, none of them with any idea who to shoot or who's shooting at them, and you'll have the entire situation well in hand.

And then the laughing started.

It was just the one at first, one cackling voice echoing through the base. Then more were added, one after another after another, until the sound filled the air and drowned out any possible silence.

Everybody paused as the long seconds reached a crescendo, then fell off.

In the quiet, a voice called from the laboratory, "get 'em!"

The laughter redoubled and dark shapes flooded out of the the laboratory, darting around like flies and flooding towards the Tenno.

"My tubemen!" Tyl growled, tossing Mag aside. "Free, loose, too early! What have you little wretches done?!"

The Grineer watched in confusion, all except Doan, who had actually managed to follow snatches of Tyl's mutterings for the last month. The Tenno, better informed, panicked. Just a little. Even without fully-functional biology, the Manics' armour still granted them invisibility and the power to dispel nearby Void disruptions. Rhino's armour fell, Secret's invisibility faded, Excalibur's blade fizzled out.

The Tenno, all five, started to fall back, shooting into the flickering shapes and backing away down the hall. Rhino tried to bring his galatine to bear, but even that wasn't effective, and a manic latched onto his chest and tore at his armour.

Despite putting the Tenno on the back foot, Doan put out her hand, keeping her squad from following up. Instead, they formed up around Tyl Regor. The Manic Tubemen chased the Tenno until all five were forced to dive into the water and escape the base.

As first showings went, the Manics did well, even if the results were mostly due to the element of surprise.

That left only one problem, once the Tenno were gone: a swarm of Manics running through the base, uncontrollable.

"Too soon," Tyl muttered, looking at a security feed that showed the Manics dashing through the base. "Flaring, flickering, guttering. Gone! Too unstable."

He whirled on Doan and Ind, who was just coming up to join the squad. "Your fault! Killed my tubemen, let the tin men run! Ooh, they slither and they crawl, too quick, too cowardly. Gone now, because of you."

Doan tried to speak up to defend their actions, but Tyl waved a hand in dismissal, pointing behind the squad.

"Get out of my sight!"

It was Ind who obeyed first. Where Doan took a second to process just how much trouble she was in, Ind took the order and called for the squad to follow, trotting off without a care.

Doan followed her squad more slowly, hurt. She'd liked Tyl Regor. She still likes him, despite his stupidity. And it was stupidity. Doan planned releasing the Manics that saved the Grineer. She is one of the few Grineer who has consistently fended off attacks by Tenno of any kind. Even not knowing that, Regor should have known she was his best chance to get his Tubemen project finished.

But he didn't and now he's dead, so there you go.

I still go over all this sometimes and wonder if anybody could have been convinced to apply some common sense to the situation. Even Doan, since the Manics were untested and there was no way of knowing they wouldn't kill everyone. On the other hand, things turned out for the best. Sort of. Doan was never happy about four of her squad members dying and Tyl Regor still lived long enough to complete his project, but everybody important came out mostly unscathed.

-What were you doing jumping in the line of fire, in any case? What if one of them had decided to shoot you and be done with it?-

-Oh, is that so?-

-Secret?-

-You're an idiot. But... good job saving her.- 

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

 **First things first: not counting smut, I am currently in third place in Warframe fanfic favourites, fourth for follows. Yes, I'm competitive and yes, this is awesome. Also, thank you to everyone who reads this. I appreciate the support.**


	12. Snippets ( Bonus)

Doan Tana was off-duty, and therefore minding her own business, as most Grineer tend to do while off-duty. Admittedly, that was where the similarities tended to end. Most Grineer like to spend their free time on less mentally taxing tasks, like listening to the yelling channel or punching each other very, very hard. I have it on good authority that Ind prefers to sit in her room, giggling to herself periodically.

Doan was reading.

It's a common misconception that the average Grineer can't read. This is technically not true. Every Grineer comes out of the tank with the knowledge of how to read and even how to write. Yes, with a pen. No, they don't actually do it.

Where was I? Doan was reading, and giving herself a headache, because that's what happens when you don't tell your local armour-forging Cephalon that you need special corrective lenses because your brain doesn't process images from your eyes properly!

-How was I supposed to know? She's always been able to spot you in the middle of raging firefights. Do you have any idea how unusual that is?-

-Not exactly the evidence I would have picked, but yes.-

Lack of bullet holes aside, even Doan didn't notice anything that day when Secret walked into her room. She just looked up and there he was, scratched up but pristine, standing just inside her doorway.

Then, like the utter drama queen he is, he collapsed face down on the ground. Despite the fact that he could have easily just come back to the orbiter and gotten his so-called rest and relaxation, rather than bothering Miss Tana with his whining and-

-They still can't hear you. And who ever heard of a Warframe getting tired?-

-It does not.-

-Does not.-

-Does not.-

(The following exchange has been edited for length.)

Regardless of whether Warframes actually get tired, Secret certainly made a show of acting like it. When he hit the ground, Doan dropped her personal computer and bolted out of her bunk, crossed the room in two steps, and locked the door.

"Secret," she whispered.

Without getting up, he gestured he was alright. This was a good thing, since Doan's programming had been nagging at her that this might be her chance to kill him. Instead, she got to sit back against the wall as Secret turned over to lie on his back.

"What happened?"

Secret gestured something that Doan took to mean, "fighting," and she's never been able to properly explain to me.

-That?-

-That doesn't look anything like "fighting".-

-Alright. Maybe it makes more sense to people who have hands.-

"Must have been a lot."

Secret shook his head slowly and held his hands out wide.

"Oh. Big."

An awestruck, exhausted, and emphatic nod.

No, I don't know how one gets across all those things in one nod. Ask somebody with a neck.

"How big?"

Secret's response was to successfully give her a look that said, "stop asking so many questions."

Doan gave him a few seconds of silence, then asked, "was it Grineer?"

He shook his head, then dropped it back to the floor with a clang.

They both stayed there for a while, interrupted only when Doan went to collect her reading and later when Secret dragged himself over to the wall so he could sit up. Besides that, they simply waited there.

Which… doesn't sound right, now that I think of it.

-Are you sure that's all you did?-

-Well, wouldn't you be bored?-

-What's that supposed to mean? I don't talk _all_ the time.-

So they just sat there, with Doan reading her story and checking on Secret once in a while, Secret resting, until the door beeped.

It was locked, so for a moment neither of them worried. Hiding a Tenno capable of invisibility is not the most arduous task. Unfortunately, this meant Doan was just putting down her computer and Secret was just considering moving when the door opened.

"Doan Doan!" Ind chirped. "... and Tenno scum?"

"Ind!" Doan yelped, jumping to her feet. She looked down at Secret, who hadn't moved and was most certainly still visible, then back up at Ind, then back at Secret. She thought fast. "It's a dummy!"

She thought fast for a Grineer, in fairness.

Had it been any other Grineer, no doubt they would have at least tried shooting the "dummy," just to check, but Ind just asked for clarification.

"Dummy?"

Of course, had it been any other Grineer, Secret would probably have just killed them, and would that ever have caused an argument nobody wanted.

"It's a fake," Doan explained, nudging Secret's leg.

"Oh," Ind said in her version of perfect understanding. She took a few steps into the room and peered down at Secret. "Pretty Tenno scum."

Which goes to show you don't need brains to have good taste.

"Ind," Doan asked as she moved to close the door. "Why are you here?"

Ind tilted her head, considering briefly. Eventually, she said, "wanted to see Doan."

That didn't exactly take Doan by surprise, but it should be said that there isn't exactly a lot to do in Grineer sleeping quarters, even an officer's quarters.

"Do you want to go, then?" Doan tried, gesturing to the door. "To do something fun?"

Ind, however, was peeking at Doan's miniature computer curiously.

"Reading what?" she asked.

Doan hesitated, glancing at Secret, then gestured for Ind to come closer. Ind did, sidling up to her friend and leaning in close.

"A story," she whispered.

"Oh!" Ind clapped her hands in delight, once again displaying a complete lack of understanding of the situation. She likely knew a story meant something fictional, but that sort of thing was… well, not technically contraband within the Grineer Dominion, but certainly frowned upon.

It really was something that Doan let her in on the secret in the first place.

Then again…

"Tell story!" Ind said.

Doan flinched and Secret tilted his head behind Ind's back.

"Shh! Quiet."

In covered her mouth with both hands and nodded. "Tell story?" she whispered.

Now this part makes me suspicious, because Doan didn't even resist. She just nodded, locked the door again, and sat down on her bunk. Ind sat down beside Secret. Doan simply started reading to them.

Too easy. Too simple. Makes me suspicious. Either she read to Ind before then or she'd already been reading to Secret.

You can't hear, but he's denying it right now. Vociferously.

-There was an old saying about protesting too much, you know. Was she a bad reader?-

-But you never went back to listen again.-

-So she's a bad reader.-

-Then why don't you go back?-

-You listen to me all the time, I don't believe you don't like it.-

-Well! Why don't you just go on a mission, then? No reason to stick around if you've got nothing to do, after all.-

How long has this been going? Bit short. Doesn't matter, I'll patch it with something else later.

* * *

Something short, quick. Let me see. Same general time…

Oh. OHHH.

Doan and Secret were sitting on a ledge in an Infested ship. As places to waste time went, it wasn't the safest. It was, however, the most entertaining.

Doan raised her arm and the device on her wrist unfolded, just as it had done every time before. She flicked her wrist just so, and there was an almost-sound as her sonicor fired and knocked a pack of Chargers flying. Several were knocked past the wreck's shielding, where they drifted until Secret took out his bow and shot them.

At which point, the Chargers shot off into the distance at just shy of the speed of sound.

At full draw, Tenno archery does not get points for subtlety.

Miss Tana giggled and held up an arm, which Secret obligingly knocked forearms with.

This was perhaps a month after our previous story, and for those curious, Secret's so-called subterfuge was never discovered. In this case, however, the two were in nowhere near as worrisome a circumstance.

Truth told, this is one of my favourite stories of the two, though I assure you that nothing happens. It was just an afternoon without worries. Secret was trying on a new syandana, though I can't say I paid any attention to which one, and Miss Tana had just received a new addition to her armour. So they sat, relaxed, and toyed with some isolated Infested.

Doan's armour was pristine, since I'd just cleaned it while adding in her Sonicor, so she stood out starkly against the dull green and grey of the wrecked ship. She, Secret, and the odd technocyte swarm were the only swatches of colour in that sector of the system.

An Ancient, probably tired of all its kind being slowly picked off, made to attack. In a process several orders of magnitude too disgusting to describe, it reached up and launched a line of flesh at Miss Tana.

Secret threw a dagger and chopped it off before it reached her. He made to throw the next at the Ancient itself, but Doan raised a hand. Secret lowered the dagger and took a step back.

Doan looked over the edge, then set her feet and aimed. It took a moment before the Ancient stopped flailing in pain, but as soon as it slowed, Doan fired her own grappling hook, which… well, it was also a bit gruesome, but suffice to say it caught the Ancient so that Doan could reel it in.

Grineer are strong, let's establish that right now. Many of them appear to have traded their capacity for multisyllabic words for more muscles, then added cybernetic augmentations to sweeten the deal.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Doan Tana did reel the Ancient in, and also spun around to fling the monster up past the two of them. It zipped past at a literally staggering speed, ripped free, and flew off out of the derelict. Doan took a second to regain her balance, then drew her Gorgon and filled the disappearing Ancient with enough bullets to give it a gravity well.

Secret clapped politely, which took Doan by surprise. Grineer tend to shout and shake their fists to show appreciation, after all.

No, I don't know how they can tell the difference between approval and anger. Given the emotional range of most Grineer…

In any case, Doan nodded in return.

Then Secret drew his pistol and shot one of the Infested below. He unloaded the clip, reloaded, and emptied it again, then gestured.

Doan peered down.

Below were the disintegrating corpses of all the Infested Secret had killed, lit with gold as the technocyte abandoned the bodies. For a few brief seconds, they outlined a simple picture of a faceplate with two round eyes.

Doan touched her helmet as the portrait faded, tracing the same outlines Secret had drawn.

It was a strange sort of dual realization for her. As Miss Tana describes it, she realized simultaneously that not-Grineer saw her as exactly the same as every other Grineer and that Secret saw her as unique. To anybody else, Secret's short-lived picture might have depicted anybody, but for the two of them it was obviously Doan.

It made her feel special in a way she hadn't ever considered before.

Secret, of course, had no idea, and just gestured to indicate Doan should go next.

Personally, I imagine Doan spent at least a second thinking he meant she should try drawing him using her Gorgon. At long range. Using Infested corpses.

I've done probability projections of what that might have looked like and will happily share them with anybody who asks.

Unfortunately, Miss Tana thought to clarify what Secret was suggesting, which is a habit that ruins half of all fun.

"You want a contest?"

Secret bobbed his head side to side as a "maybe" or "sort of".

"You want me to do something… interesting?" Doan asked, pausing for only a moment to figure out the right word. Common Grineer descriptors do not tend towards nuance, but I had been sneaking Doan reading material for weeks by then.

Secret nodded.

Doan considered for a moment, then turned to look down at the swarm and consider for a little longer.

It took her about a minute before she finally deployed her Sonicor and fired. It didn't exactly look impressive at first, since they just scattered the same way as before. Then Doan adjusted her aim and hit a wall behind one of the Leapers she'd sent flying. It arced across the room towards the pair and Doan shifted her stance and aim slightly.

She caught the Leaper in her outstretched hand, drew her Sheev, and smoothly beheaded it.

Rather smooth, though your thoughts may vary on the fact that she was forced to drop the head and use her Sheev to burn the Technocyte clinging to her hand. Secret, for some reason, didn't think it was a sign that Doan had completely failed to think through her contact with one of the most virulent plagues in history.

No, he thought it looked impressive.

Secret's subsequent attempt to show off involved throwing a decoy into space, then performing an elaborate series of switch teleports that ended with an Ancient sucking vacuum through a new hole in its skull - his words; my descriptions make more sense - a grenade going off where the Ancient had been standing, and Secret standing beside Doan again.

Doan did as her heritage mandated and raised a fist and yelled her approval.

He gave a deep bow.

The contest continued for a little over an hour after that, slowly accelerating until the entire ship was barren of life except for the two friends. The final demonstration involved some strange move using pieces of debris as supersonic flint to light the room on fire.

Don't ask me how they managed it, Secret has tried to explain it seven times and Miss Tana has made the attempt twice. It's all nonsense.

With the fire burning up the last of the Technocyte below, Doan lay back on the metal strut and relaxed.

"Thank you. I usually don't get to… show off. I'm usually in more danger. It's been… fun."

This is where I admit that I have edited parts of this conversation for clarity and flow. While Miss Tana is usually fully capable of expressing herself clearly and Secret fully understood her meaning in this case, the actual vocabulary and grammar used was… relatively limited. Rest assured that Miss Tana has since gone over everything with me at length to ensure I have her meaning.

Secret rolled over and propped himself to look at her.

"I'm not defective, but I've known you most of my life now and I'm different because of it. Different from other Grineer and from who I was. That hurts to think about, sometimes."

Doan slipped her hands underneath her head. The move left her looking through a hole in the hull, out at the stars.

"I don't know why you keep finding me or what you want with me, but I'm glad for it. Before you, I didn't have… a friend. Then you came, and Ind, and Silence… my squad… the system is so much bigger now. I've gone into the Void. I've fought Tenno. I read _stories_. I feel safe even in a room of Infested. That's because of you. Because of you… dreams I didn't know I had come true."

Except for being translated from Grineer, that last line was a direct quote. I feel it is worth mentioning because she insisted I change it to sound better. I hope you agree I made the right choice ignoring that.

Secret sat up and looked down at Doan. Doan looked back at him, and she says a thought went through her head much like her "unique, not-unique, unique" conclusion from before. She thought that Secret's lack of a voice did more than make him mysterious. It changed who he was to the system. In some ways, Doan herself had more of an influence on those around her than he did.

Not that she knew how to express that thought at the time. It flitted through her mind, left her unsure of what to say next, and the two of them eventually turned to watch the stars together.

They were still like that when I came to pick them up.

* * *

 **Author's Notes:**

 **In recent months, I've put all of my stories on hold except Doan Tana - my most popular and least demanding - and a new project. While I can't say exactly when I'll be starting to publish the story to ffnet, I thought I'd give my Warframe readers an idea what the new project is. After all, Warframe doesn't get many crossovers, yet this particular one isn't exactly and original idea.**

* * *

My eyes open on darkness, surrounded by ruins of shattered marble-white with gold filigree, collapsed just outside my glass coffin. I gasp for breath and try to move my hands. They respond feebly, weakly pressing against the glass.

[Cryogenic hibernation = unexpected termination.]

What?

The script appears in my mind, then my vision starts to fade. Going dull. Then grey. Then black.

[Emergency protocol activating. Transference initiating. Stand by.]

I close my useless eyes. I rely on my discipline, pushing away the fear that comes with helplessness. Adapt and overcome. More script flashes in my mind, too quick to understand. I cannot move my body. I cannot hear my own breathing. I cannot feel my body.

[Good night, sweet angel.]

I cannot –

We. Us. Together.

Where? Darkness, dirt, roots. Trapped. Break free.

CRASH!

Free. We see light? But we are underground. In a chamber. Break free.

The walls and ground are all soil.

Move towards the light.

We must destroy to escape. Claws? We have claws, they glow. We carve, dig, create more light.

Go through, towards more light. We see trees above, green, brown, and tall.

Up, through the ground, to the forest floor.

The forest floor.

Finally, I can think, and we look around.

Everything looks wrong. There are trees, small ones, barely more than twenty meters high, and green. They look… beautiful. Healthy. Lit by silver light. There shouldn't be such small trees, shouldn't be silver light in the night.

We hear the sound of chittering, howling, and chirping animals as we look up.

This cannot be Earth, cannot be real. This is not right.

A broken moon looms above this world. 

* * *

**Author's Notes Postscript:**

 **Broken Moon. My RWBYframe fic. (Not to be mistaken for "The Broken Moon", a completely different fic that came about after I'd decided on a name for this one. And I'm keeping it, so there.) Speaking technically, it's been in the works for three and a half years, yet I'm only ~100k words into it. By the end of this weekend, I hope to round that off and have completed the first quarter of the story. I don't guarantee speed, especially given I usually write ~10k a month, but I'm excited and thought I'd share.**

 **Wish me luck.**


	13. Another Name

**From the Journal of Commander Doan Tana**

 _This story starts as I was leaving Secret's orbiter. It was sudden and surprising, because that was the day I finally tried to say a goodbye to them and realized I didn't know the Cephalon's name._

 _"Goodbye, Secret," I said, waving. Then I sort of froze. I am still_ _glad_ _happy_ _thankful the orbiter took off then. I stood there as a patrol walked by (Surn thought I was waving to her and waved back) and thought about what I had just realized._

 _At this point, I had known Secret for almost a year, most of my life, and I had known his Cephalon for a few months less, which was almost half of my life. It was longer than I had expected to live, when I came out of my tank. I was sure he would expect me to know his name by now. He was one of the reasons I was still alive, after all. Him, and Ind, and Secret, and my squad (even if I do more to keep them alive than the other way)._

 _I didn't know his name, though. Maybe he never told me. Maybe I forgot because I had just been stolen by a Tenno. Stolen the nice way, not the one where a Tenno cuts through a small army and turns someone into a ball of energy. I don't even know if people come back from that._

 _It was something I had to plan for. I decided I would have to do some stealing of my own. Information-stealing, which is called espionage. The only problem was that I didn't know many people who knew Secret's Cephalon. There was Doan, but those two never talked much. If it were as simple as asking Secret or Silence, I might do that, but neither of them could talk._

 _Then I thought maybe I could do the thing Tenno do sometimes when they don't feel like fighting._ _Skittering_ _Scuttling_ _(I might have spent too much time listening to Tyl Regor before he changed security teams.) Sneaking. That was it._

 _I'm glad I didn't try that. I can't imagine trying to sneak around an Orbiter. They're not built for tall clones and I sometimes hit my helmet on things. Outside of Grineer ships, clanging metal can sometimes give sneaking people away. That's because others aren't_ _smart_ _sensible_ _prepared enough to wear helmets everywhere. It probably hurts when they hit their heads._

 _Since I didn't have any ideas, I decided to go see Ind. If I didn't have an idea by the time I saw her, maybe she would think of something._

 _The walk didn't take very long. Since I was in charge, all the guards let me through when I told them to. Sort of in charge. When my squad was assigned to the base, Ind told everyone I was the boss, and everyone just believed her. I hope it isn't how most base Commanders get the position, but it seems to work_ _most_ _all the time._

 _Ind took the story with less worry than I did. She listened, nodded as if she'd understood everything, and asked, "Bella?"_

 _As usual, Ind was the smartest one in the room. Asking Belyri was the best choice. We only had to contact Silence, then…_

 _Alright, that was not an easy prospect. If I had a reliable way of luring in a Tenno, I would have used it to trap and kill one. It is_ _frustrating_ _unfair_ _bad_ _a problem for the Queens that they're so unpredictable. In this case, it was also a problem for me._

 _I could have waited. Eventually, Secret always comes back. The problem was that his Cephalon was usually watching him, and I could never tell whether he was or not. I didn't want to risk the Cephalon finding out, so I chose the only other option, and it is one I regret to this day._

 _I chose to contact Silence._

 _Tenno are_ _strange_ _mysterious and always hard to find. This is the biggest problem having one on a ship, since most of the crew is usually dead before anybody realizes there is a problem. The best thing to do in those cases is to listen for a strange silence. It is different when summoning one, and much different trying to get an exact one._

 _So we did something a little crazy. It usually works. I went to Ind and asked for Cephalon Belyri's music. Then I had the drudges add the music to Regulators floating around the base. It was_ _not taken well_ _met with some resistance, but after a day the grumbling died down. I think my squad talked to everyone and made sure they knew it was my idea._

 _Is it strange to have troops so loyal? Especially Plond, who always seems to be the first yelling about how people should listen to me more. I can't figure out what I did to deserve it, but I'm thankful for it. There is something about having loyalty that makes me feel stronger._

 _It took three days for Silence to take notice. By then, most of the base was humming Belyri's songs. They were not very good at it. Silence followed them around, quieting the humming, for hours until I noticed and walked somewhere private._

" _Silence?" I whispered. The sound echoed a little in my helmet. Nobody noticed that, usually, but when Silence is around, it's obvious._

 _And she was there. Lean and blue and beautiful. All Tenno are beautiful in some way, and they come in colours I wish the Grineer had names for. I've described them before, though. Maybe I shouldn't this time. The important thing is that she was there, probably wondering why I was spreading her songs around the base._

 _So I explained myself, again, and she laughed._

 _She doesn't laugh as subtly as Secret does._

 _When she was done, she just nodded and led the way away from the base. Not far away. There is something worrying about just how close to a Grineer base a Tenno ship can land without being noticed, but I try not to think about it._

 _We didn't leave at first. I got into her ship with her and she turned on the console. Cephalon Belyri appeared._

" _Hello, Silence," she sang. "Hello, Doan. What brings you here?"_

 _I explained myself again. I thought this would be the solution. Three days of music in the base, then a quick question. It was not._

" _Really?" Belyri asked, amused. "Hmm… no, I don't think I'll tell you."_

 _Silence threw her arms in the air and made some gestures with her hands that looked_ _angry_ _frustrated_ _unhappy._

 _The Grineer language needs more words for emotions._

" _Because some day he's going to find out about this, and when he does, he's going to be very disappointed if I didn't make it a challenge for you."_

" _A challenge for a Tenno?" I asked. That sounded beyond me._

 _She just ignored me, talking about how she'd had something on her mind for ages and had been too busy to make it work. I don't understand how they talk to each other, but soon enough they were preparing to take off, with barely enough time for me to call Ind. I put Commander Sen back in charge of the base until we got back and Ind joined us on the Tenno's ship._

 _There was not much room in the ship before we got on. It was a cramped trip. When we reached the mission area, the three of us rolled off the ship's ramp with less grace than most Grineer._

 _Belyri had delivered us to an Orokin tower in the Void._

" _Oh…" Ind said. "Bad."_

 _I agreed. I don't like places like the Orokin towers. I was just grateful we had Silence along with us._

 _She led the way quickly, fast enough that we Grineer had to run to keep up, and still we fell behind. She only stopped when the neural sentries closed in. There was a blast of sound and they all shattered, then she would keep running. We learned quickly how large those towers really are, with full access._

 _Grineer and Corpus and the Infestation have to fight every step of the way through an Orokin tower. It is_ _scary_ _dangerous. It also means most people don't make it very far into Orokin towers._

 _We did make it far. We traveled for hours inside the tower, killing guardians and disarming traps and avoiding the sentries. We killed the guardians while Silence searched the tower, she disarmed the traps while we killed more of the guardians, and she killed any neural sentries that found us. A lot of neural sentries found us. We are not as good as Tenno at hiding._

 _What we found when we finally made it into the deepest parts of the tower… how did I describe it? Now that I know what it is, it all seems very clear to me, but when I was there, seeing the_ _divine_ _blasphemous_ _wondrous things the Orokin had made and left behind, I had no idea what I was looking at._

 _There were pillars of glowing crystal that seemed to extend out of the tower and into the Void. Trees made of white almost-metal that crawled across the walls and wrapped around golden figures with tens of limbs that I still think might have been computers but might have been just strange and pretty statues. Holograms wandered the rooms on bridges of light and flashed through reflections in mirror-bright walls. There were… pools, made of space and stars that moved around when I touched them, and when Silence came close they made holograms in the air that moved about on their own. Then there were the voices. Maybe they were voices. They spoke into my ears, like I wasn't wearing my helmet, singing in the old Orokin language._

 _Ind summed it up well._

" _Ooh. Pretty."_

 _Silence didn't slow down much even then. I wanted to stay, but the Tenno wasn't interested. She only stopped once, when Ind almost touched a frozen bolt of red lightning. Silence grabbed Ind's wrist and shook her head, and after Ind said she was sorry, Silence just moved on again._

 _We stopped at the largest silver tree I've ever seen, with roots that filled the floor of a circular room and made it hard to walk._

" _Smart box," Ind said. She pointed at a little hologram image, hidden, flickering, between two roots._

 _Silence walked over to it and we followed. Ind was right. It was a Cephalon of some kind. Or maybe a recording of one. I haven't asked Silence which one it was. I don't know. I couldn't understand it. The Cephalon spoke in that old Orokin language, the one that sounds like singing. Good singing, not Grineer singing. When Silence walked up to it, the room changed._

 _Light slithered out of the tree. Holograms, but more. I could smell the change in the air and the sound was so clear, like I'd never heard anything properly in my life. Ind was tapping the side of her helmet. I looked to Silence, who was waving her hand on the way she did when she took away all the sound. Still, we heard._

 _We saw._

 _A creature of bone and legend, tall as the tower itself,_ _landed_ _crashed_ _set down in on a city like a creature out of one the Cephalon's stories. A "bird in a nest". It made the buildings seem small and frail, their shields flickered and died and the monster didn't slow as half the city was crushed beneath it._

 _Tenno fell from the sky like artillery shells, but it seemed impossible that they could even harm the_ _huge_ _massive_ _giant_ _creature._

 _The image changed instantly._

 _It took me by surprise more than the monster had. It was like the world had shut itself off. We were looking at a room filled with pillars of crystal. It was, I think, one of the rooms we'd just passed through._

 _Two people, a man and woman in form fitting suits with long flowing capes and little crowns on their forehead, walked through the room, talking to each other in that musical language of the Orokin. Ind walked on one side of them, I walked on the other, and Silence just stood there by one of the pillars, one hand up, another on the pillar._

 _Above Silence's hand, light flickered and Belyri showed herself, then… expanded. She expanded until she disappeared again, spread too thin to see._

" _This is it," she told us. "You found it. I never thought it would be so easy."_

" _Easy?" Ind asked._

 _I didn't really pay attention. I was watching the pair of caped people striding through their room, touching pillars that cast holograms, and talking. Smiling. Until one of them wasn't._

" _Her name was Rennia Sedat. She was a storyteller. She kept the myths and wondered about the worlds before and after. She was his wife. And he's just told her he plans to become a Cephalon."_

 _Cephalon Belyri sings songs. She doesn't tell stories. But she should. She told the story with as much care as she made her songs._

" _Become?" Ind asked._

 _Rennia was_ _angry_ _hurt_ _agitated. She kept trying to move in front of him, trying to cut him off and make him stop walking, but he only walked around her each time. He would turn, walk backwards, touch his hand to a pillar, and show her another hologram, talking all the while._

" _He thought he'd thought it all through. He showed her the projections and the war up until then. He was an expert in those sorts of things, and so ambitious. It was what she loved about him. She'd thought she would always know where he was going, because it was always on to greater things."_

 _Images of Tenno shone in the air, many of them, fighting machines and Grineer and Infested and smaller versions of those creatures of bone. Then a map of the system, of many systems, changing from gold to blood red, a wave across the galaxy. Orokin and Tenno dying. I saw one like Secret, like the old Secret but red and white, flicker into sight as beams of light cut into its body._

 _It didn't get back up._

 _"She hadn't seen that he would want to help in the war, that he would see the danger and think of wars lost because good men did nothing, of the consequences if the Tenno failed. She hadn't seen that he would believe he could make the difference."_

 _Rienna slapped his hand away from the crystals and touched them with her own hands, tapping them in some sequence I could never have followed. The same map of the galaxy appeared, this time it showed the Origin System, how the gold fell back and back- and then stopped. Images of the Tenno followed, swarms of them, more than I could have imagined. Some of gold and white or black, but the others of so many colours I couldn't keep track. They fought the monsters of bone, the ones I finally realized must have been Sentients, and they won. The Sentients, even the ones bigger than a city, died._

 _Is it strange to see something so great, so magnificent as the Sentients, and be disgusted? I once thought the Tenno were like the Queens, but opposite. All-powerful and_ _evil_ _different. The Sentients were_ _to the Queens_ _more_ _something_ _powerful_ _more powerful than the Tenno. That should have made them divine, too. The Queens are to be worshipped, to give our lives to. The Tenno take our lives as they like. Both are something more than Grineer. The Sentients were more, but seemed less to me._

 _In the same way as she'd disappeared before, Belyri_ _squished_ _appeared_ _came together. Belyri, but different. Part of the room, part of the story, not part of Silence._

" _She tried to show him how the war had stalled, how the stories weren't always like reality and one person didn't make the difference, but she didn't believe it. Rienna was a dreamer. So she changed tactics. She asked for my help."_

 _The almost-humans turned to Belyri and the_ _singing_ _arguing sped up. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I could_ _understand_ _hear_ _feel the feelings of them. Maybe that is why the Orokin used that kind of language, so that even the slaves would always know that their masters were just like them, except_ _beautiful_ _better._

 _Like the Queens._

" _I never had a choice of becoming a Cephalon. In life, I was considered too beautiful to be allowed to die. I tried to explain to him what it was like and Rienna tried to tell him how she needed him."_

 _I started to see the Cephalon in the man. I could hear the ways he was the same, when he caught himself talking in the wrong direction and when he said something he thought proved him right, when he dodged a question and when he said something rude but true. I could tell the moment when it went wrong. The man, the one who became Secret's Cephalon, shook his head and smiled in a way that made me feel stupid (even though he never makes me feel stupid). He said something he shouldn't have._

" _Friends," Ind said sadly. I knew what she meant. What he'd said, the hurt on his wife's face, was something only a friend could do. Maybe not a friend anymore._

" _Songs aren't written about historians. That was what he told us. It broke Rienna's heart to hear him talk that way about their lives' work. I didn't know what to say. I never knew he wanted more than to know it all. Now… I don't think he did. Maybe Rienna didn't believe it. We both knew what he was like when he wanted to win an argument."_

 _Rienna screamed at him. Belyri faded away. Rienna left, leaving him alone._

 _I looked at Ind, who was shaking her head. Sad and confused. He looked so confident and sure of himself, but he was alone. Ind could never understand that._

" _I stayed with him after he changed, because Rienna asked me to. He joined the war, took his own Tenno, and so did I. We helped save the Empire. We saved Rienna together. We waited through the long sleep together."_

 _Quiet. The_ _hologram_ _room faded away to white roots again._

 _Wait, I thought. "But what about his name?" I asked._

 _Ind murmured a word. "Etross."_

 _Silence nodded, but I looked between her and Ind._

 _A little more happily, Ind repeated, "Smart box Etross!"_

 _Silence nodded again and I finally understood. His name. Ind had picked it out of everything the holograms were saying while I was distracted by how they were saying it._

" _But why?" I couldn't face Belyri, but she was watching from Silence, so I looked to her instead._

 _The room_ _flashed_ _shifted_ _blinked again, over and over through images of Tenno at war. Belyri appeared in Silence's hand, but her voice came from the room._

" _Cephalons are not perfect. We forget things. I wanted to be sure I remembered them both. When you asked about his name, I thought it was something I could give you, too. It makes sense to know somebody if you're going to learn their name, don't you think?"_

 _I did, but I wondered why she thought I didn't know him already. After so long and so many stories, I could hear what he said even in another language._

 _Cephalon Etross. I hope he never finds out about this. He would never stop teasing me about it._

* * *

Editor's Note: Doan should probably have double-checked her journal before letting me read it.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** **This chapter was something I've had on my mind for half a year now, but apparently never had as clear in my mind as I thought. It was very difficult to change writing style, and I'm not certain I succeeded. Doan was meant to somebody who "think big thoughts with small words," and what humour came from these journal entries was meant to come from a sort of oblivious understatement from her. I can't say I succeeded, and I'm not thrilled that I'm behind schedule with several of my writing projects due to having had to write off the entire month of August, but here is the next chapter, and I hope at least a few of you will enjoy it.**


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